Thanks to Hormel Foods for inviting me to be a part of The Pantry Project: a special website with resources and ideas for stocking and cooking from our pantries while sheltering in place. While families shelter in place and try to minimize excursions to shop for food and other essentials, parents find themselves having to cook for their kids ...
Weeknight Turkey Bolognese
Thanks to ShopCaputo's for sponsoring today's post. Use Caputo's online ordering and home delivery to stay sane this holiday season! For $20 off your first order (over $60) on ShopCaputo's use the promo code WEST20. With Thanksgiving less than two weeks away, the holiday season is definitely upon us. For most of us, this is the busiest time ...
Pan-Seared Duck Breast with Plums
Thank you Decoy for sponsoring this post. Celebrate International Merlot Month this October by using the hashtag #MerlotMe on social! When you see a recipe, like this one, for duck, do you scoff and think: "Make duck? At home? No, that's too complicated. I might order duck in a restaurant, but that's not something I can cook." Well, think ...
Chicken Tinga Pasta
This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #BarillaFusion #CollectiveBias Today I am rethinking one of my family's favorite recipes: Chicken Tinga. Quick and easy to make, Chicken Tinga is a classic dish of shredded chicken in a tomato and chipotle chile sauce. I usually serve ...
Honey-Glazed Chicken Thighs for Rosh Hashanah
Quick-cooking chicken thighs in a sweet-tart honey and lime juice glaze. Easy enough for a weeknight but special enough for Rosh Hashanah. When planning the menu for your Jewish holiday meal, it's easy just to say "brisket" for the main course and be done with it. My family certainly expects me to serve brisket for Hanukkah...and ...
Potato Leek Soup (Potage Parmentier)
In the Victorian Christmas carol "In the Bleak Midwinter," which was based on a poem by Christina Rossetti, there is a line: "Snow had fallen, snow on snow/Snow on snow[.]" That line seems particularly apt right now as Chicago braces itself for not one but two possible winter storms over the next 48 hours. What to eat when you are facing the ...
Double Ginger Molasses Cookies from Dorie Greenspan
A new cookbook from baking guru Dorie Greenspan is always cause for celebration. And when that cookbook is all about cookies? Well, all I can say is preheat the oven and soften some butter. Because it is time to bake. Every year in September, National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, housewares giant OXO supports Cookies for Kids Cancer, a ...
Kids Cooking Class with Ming Tsai at Macy’s
This post is sponsored by Everywhere Agency on behalf of Macy’s; however, all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own. Today's kids, raised on shows like Masterchef Junior and Chopped, love to cook. My kids are no exception. They love to bake cookies and cupcakes and help me prepare family meals. So when I found that JR could participate ...
Top 10 Things I Saw at the Home and Housewares Show, Part II
As I explained in Part I of my recap, this past weekend was the International Home and Housewares Show, the housewares industry's enormous annual trade show with over 2100 exhibitors from 40 countries. I attended as press and as part of the team behind the lifestyle website Inspired Home. I have not attended many trade shows in my life -- ...
Top 10 Things I Saw at the Home and Housewares Show: Part I
This past weekend was the annual International Home and Housewares Show, an enormous trade show for the housewares industry at Chicago's McCormick Place, with over 2000 exhibitors showcasing the latest products and gadgets. I attended as press and as part of the team behind the lifestyle website Inspired Home. As a cookware and kitchen ...
Blood Orange Curd
It's not blood-curdling, it's blood orange curd. And, in fact, it is rich, sweet and delicious. Pretty too, no? In a lovely shade of Creamsicle orange. I can't get enough blood oranges at this time of year. They are the sexiest of the citrus fruits with their mottled exteriors and screaming scarlet flesh. There is even an erotic film called ...
Chocolate Orange Yogurt Truffles
Chocolate orange truffles made with Divine Chocolate dark chocolate and Stonyfield yogurt instead of cream? These may be decadent but I feel no guilt whatsoever! Valentine's Day is right around the corner, but you still have time to make your beloved a homemade gift. And what could be more romantic than chocolate? But what if your ...
January 2016 Chicago Food Swap Recap
Between my two-week vacation and my early January move, I was not prepared for the first Chicago Food Swap event of 2016. In fact, I had been quite lax about promoting the swap and, as a result, it looked like we were going to have quite a low turnout. But then, a whole bunch of last-minute registrations came in, and a few people even showed ...
Meyer Lemon Recipe Round-Up
It's specialty citrus season! Exotic varieties of citrus are one of the few culinary highlights in the otherwise bleak Chicago winter. Like an antidote to the winter doldrums, a new kind of citrus fruit arrives in the stores every week during the winter months. Pomelos, tangelos, blood oranges, Key limes and Meyer lemons are just some of the ...
Christmas Mince Pies
Aren't these individual mince pies adorable? I'm pretty taken with them myself. Wouldn't they look so festive at a holiday party, cookie exchange or even as the end to a jolly Christmas dinner? I couldn't just give you a recipe for sweet, spicy apple mincemeat, tell you that it makes an absolutely smashing pie filling -- yes, I'm feeling rather ...
Cookie Recipe Round-Up for National Cookie Day
Friday is National Cookie Day! And why not? It's the time of year when everyone is pulling out their favorite cookie recipes, creaming sugar and butter, chilling dough, cutting out shapes, piping icing, drizzling chocolate and filling tins. Even people who rarely bake have a favorite cookie without which their holidays would not be complete. If ...
Homemade Stuffed Shells to Feed a Crowd
Thanksgiving is barely over and Hanukkah is right around the corner. Many of us are still recovering from one holiday and another is upon us. And right in the midst of all the celebrations and obligations that this time of year brings, a friend of mine lost her mother. She came home from the funeral, looked up and it was Thanksgiving. I barely ...
Mashed Potato (Boxty) Bread
Come Friday, you will have leftover mashed potatoes sitting in your fridge. Don't try to deny it. I am sure that those mashed potatoes will be absolutely delicious at your Thanksgiving dinner. I hope that your guests will smother them in gravy and mix them with turkey and stuffing to get all that deliciousness in one insanely good bite. But come ...
Chipotle, Pecan, and Cranberry Cornbread Stuffing
This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #VivaLaMorena #CollectiveBias Some dishes on our Thanksgiving menu never change. Some are different every year. My mother and I have cooked our turkey the same way for a decade. We never tinker with the pumpkin pie or the Balsamic-glazed ...
Sweet Potato Pie
When your CSA hands you sweet potatoes, make sweet potato pie. Believe it or not, I'm a CSA newbie. For years, I had wanted to join a CSA, which stands for community-supported agriculture. You know how it works: you pay upfront for a share of the fruit or vegetable (or meat or dairy) harvest from a local farm and every week, or every other week, ...
Gift Ideas for Cooks from Sur La Table
Being a food blogger has afforded me some pretty amazing opportunities, like the chance to meet chefs and authors I admire, attend a two-day conference on olive oil and take a cooking class on mangoes with my kids. But for a serious cook, few experiences are as cool as the chance to visit the Corporate Test Kitchen of Sur La Table and hear about ...
Rosh Hashanah Recipes: Kreplach
If you think the matzo ball is the ultimate Jewish soup dumpling, let me quickly disabuse you of that notion. As much as I love a fluffy matzo ball, my heart truly belongs to kreplach, the meat-filled pasta triangle known affectionately as Jewish tortellini and served during the High Holidays. Never heard of kreplach? You are not alone. While ...
Bucatini with Corn Crema, Cherry Tomatoes and Green Chiles
I do not mean to alarm you, but you need to go out and buy the ingredients for this recipe right now. It's Labor Day weekend, folks. That means that summer is almost over. That means that corn and tomato season is almost over. Before we say goodbye to summer and fresh, sweet, corn and juicy, ripe, tomatoes, you are going to want to make this pasta ...
Tropical Smoothie Bowl with Silk Dairy-Free Yogurt
This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #SilkDairyFree #CollectiveBias Today, I am resetting your expectations about what breakfast can be with a quick and easy recipe that is packed with nutrition but tastes like a trip to a tropical island. This tropical smoothie bowl, which ...
Apricot Tea Cake
My family's lack of enthusiasm for apricots frustrates me. Peaches, nectarines, plums, cherries - all the other stone fruits they will eat with gusto. (Stone Fruit, by the way, is the name of my rock band.) Apricots, on the other hand, will sit in the fruit drawer until I come along and turn them into a dessert. (You might ask why, in that case, ...