I recently visited The Chopping Block, Chicago's premier recreational cooking school, to scout the location for the November 10 Chicago Food Swap. Next to the cooking school's beautiful demonstration kitchens is a small retail shop that sells high-end cookware, hard-to-find ingredients and select cookbooks. So naturally I picked up a few odds and ...
What To Do with Fresh Figs
Have you noticed fresh figs for sale at your grocery store lately? While dried figs are available all year long, fresh figs are truly a seasonal delight -- available only for a few months in the late summer and fall. While these beauties are here, I have been snapping them up and adding them to salads, flatbreads and cheese plates. I even tried my ...
Merguez with Yogurt Harissa Sauce
I have been cooking so much Middle Eastern food lately because of my obsession with the cookbook Jerusalem -- a obsession that half of American seems to share, by the way, according to . But long before I knew my way around baharat and tabbouleh, I was a big fan of North African cuisine - a region that is just down the road from the Middle East and ...
Easiest Ever Fruit Crisp
Think you don't have time to make a delicious, old-fashioned dessert for your family tonight? Well, I think that you do. Forget about making an elaborate dough that needs to be chilled and rolled out. Forget about softening butter and getting out your stand mixer. The easiest dessert to make, by far, is a crisp: sliced, sweetened fruit dumped into ...
Strawberry-Mint Lemonade
Zuzu heads off for two weeks of overnight camp tomorrow. This is her second year going and she is so excited to see her camp friends again and participate in all the fun, outdoor activities. But she is also a little sad about leaving her friends back at home. Not sad about leaving us, mind you! Sad about leaving her friends. One thing I have ...
Preserved Lemons for Tasting Jerusalem
It's June and that means it is time for a new Tasting Jerusalem challenge! Created by two food writers, Beth from the blog OMG! Yummy and Sarene Wallace from 805 Living magazine, Tasting Jerusalem is a community dedicated to exploring the cuisine of the Middle East using the cookbook Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi as a guide. Each ...
Lemon Orzo Salad with Asparagus
My mom returned from Paris a few weeks ago and reported that all the markets, and all the restaurant menus, were full of asparagus. The French get so excited about asparagus season because they don't expect to see asparagus all year round. In France, you get asparagus in the spring and once they're gone, they're gone until next year. Au ...
Healthy Snacking: Banana Yogurt Muffins
Yesterday I was working on an article about healthy snacks for the back-to-school issue of a local parenting publication. It's odd to be writing about back-to-school when my kids still have two more weeks to go in this school year, but that is how editorial calendars work. The article was a natural fit for me: I am committed to finding healthy, ...
Classic Strawberry Shortcake
This past weekend was Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer. It was a busier-than-usual weekend at my house. Saturday, my husband took our daughter to a NHL playoff game, which the Blackhawks won thankfully. My husband and I celebrated our eleventh wedding anniversary on Sunday with a dinner out -- a review of that meal coming later ...
Chocolate Spice Cookies for Tasting Jerusalem
As some of you may remember, I am participating in a virtual cooking community called Tasting Jerusalem. Created by two food writers, Beth from the blog OMG! Yummy and Sarene Wallace from 805 Living magazine, Tasting Jerusalem is a community dedicated to exploring the cuisine of the Middle East using the cookbook Jerusalem as a guide. Each month, ...
Lamb and Rice Stuffed Peppers
I suppose there is no need to mention (again) that my husband is not as adventurous an eater as I am. As a result of to his aversion to seafood and his avoidance of pork, I have a fairly limited universe of meats to cook with at home. Chicken and turkey are fine; I can even get away with the very occasional duck dish. Beef works of course, but ...
Glazed Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies
Back in March when I attended the Good Food Festival, I met some folks from Hazzard Free Farm, a Certified Naturally Grown farm near Rockford, Illinois. Hazzard Free Farm grows heirloom grains, like blue and red cornmeal, barley, wheat and oats, and sells them to many of Chicago's best restaurants. Recently, with help from a grant from Rick ...
Eating our Curds and Whey
Many of my food and mom blogger friends are raving about the new cookbook Homemade with Love by Jennifer Perillo. Perillo is a professional food writer based in Brooklyn, author of the popular food blog In Jennie's Kitchen, and mom to two daughters. I don't know Jennie personally, and sadly, I missed my chance to meet her when she was in town ...
Chicken Tomatillo Stew
Tomatillos are one of the more misunderstood fruits out there. Perhaps because of their name or because they are often used to make salsa, many people associate them with tomatoes. But in fact, tomatillos are members of the nightshade family. Their closest relatives are the gooseberry or the ground cherry -- a late-summer farmers' market crop that ...
Farmers’ Market Find: Rangpur Limes
Obviously I'm talking about a Florida farmers' market. You wouldn't be likely to find Rangpur limes at an Illinois farmers' market even in good weather, which it's not right now. No, today's farmers' market find is courtesy of the Saturday morning Old Naples Farmers" Market, which is a must on all of our Naples trips. The Old Naples Farmers' Market ...
Farmers’ Market Find: Currants
I stood in front of the table of fruit deep in thought: three kinds of currants -- white, red and black -- plus gooseberries! Another vendor a few tables over had four or five small boxes of hard-to-find tayberries. What to get? It was an embarrassment of riches. So much fruit! So many unusual and old-fashioned crops that you never see at the ...