This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #GrillWithATwist #CollectiveBias With the Fourth of July around the corner, many of us are planning a backyard barbecue to celebrate this favorite summer holiday with family and friends. These days, planning a party can mean taking into ...
Southwestern Tuna with Rice, Corn and Black Beans
My love for tuna is well-documented. And when I think tuna, of course I think Bumble Bee, the brand that was always in the pantry when I was growing up. While I adore a tuna salad sandwich for lunch as much as anyone, I also know that this healthy, lean source of protein is an incredibly versatile ingredient that can star in all kinds of dishes, ...
Skirt Steak Soft Tacos with Chipotle Crema
This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #KingOfFlavor #CollectiveBias Is there anything better than a summer weekend? My family just wrapped a perfect summer weekend of baseball, swimming, and a cookout with friends. Of course, it was also Father's Day, so I had to make a ...
Cold Strawberry Soup
Did you happen to catch me on Fox-32's morning program, "Good Day Chicago," discussing ways to preserve the strawberry harvest? You will recognize many of the projects I mentioned from last week's strawberry posts. It was such a fun segment to film and I always love talking about the Chicago Food Swap. I have one last strawberry recipe to give ...
How to Use a Flat of Strawberries: Strawberry Mango Fruit Leather
Another day, another strawberry post. I'm still working off that same flat of strawberries I bought at the farmers' market last week. Today's project is homemade strawberry fruit leather. You may recall that I tried my hand at mango fruit leather a few months ago. That project was fun and easy and everyone enjoyed the results. So when faced with ...
How to Use a Flat of Strawberries: Strawberry Vanilla Syrup
This is my second post in a series on how to use a flat of strawberries in five days. Every year at this time I remind you guys that at many farmers’ markets the price for a flat of strawberries, which is eight quarts, is the same as the price for six individual quarts. That is a great deal, but only if you actually use all the berries before ...
Rhubarb Buttermilk Mini Bundt Cakes
Maybe I should start calling this blog West of the Rhubarb. I'm clearly obsessed with this old-fashioned fruit-that-is-really-a-vegetable. It's tart! It's pink! It's versatile! Rhubarb is bae. (My eleven year old me that I couldn't write that. So naturally I did.) The other week, I arrived at the farmers' market late, something that I hate to ...
Cucumber Salad with Yogurt and Mint
With summer comes the desire to eat cool, crunchy salads. My interest in Middle Eastern cuisine has give me a new appreciation for humble cucumber. So often cucumber is relegated to the side: an afterthought thrown in to provide a hint of green or an element of crunch. Here in a refreshing, herbaceous salad, this unassuming summer vegetable is ...
Green Garlic Chimichurri
I almost hesitate to call this sauce chimichurri because it deviates in a few key ways from the traditional Argentinian recipe. You know how the food police can be! But then again, any condiment with this much parsley and garlic and that goes as well as this one does with grilled meat deserves to be called a chimichurri. Chimichurri is simply a ...
Three C’s Granola (Coconut, Cherry, Cacao)
I curdled a Hollandaise sauce tonight. Looking at that oily, grainy mess was like a dagger to the heart. The stakes might have seemed low to an outside observer. It was only a family dinner. No one in my family cared about the split Hollandaise. Hell, no one in my family was even planning to eat the Hollandaise except for me. My husband and ...
Cold Asparagus Soup
It is definitely asparagus season and although I won't be seeing any local asparagus for a few more weeks, if you live somewhere south of me, you may already have them at your farmers' market. Lucky. Meanwhile, I will content myself with fat, prosperous-looking, organic asparagus flown in from California. I gravitate towards thicker asparagus ...
Chicken Escabeche Tostadas for Cinco de Mayo
Chicago knows its Latin food. With a large and thriving Mexican population and some of the country’s best Mexican restaurants — need I mention Rick Bayless? — Chicagoans understand that the cuisine of Mexico is one of the finest in the world and extends far beyond tacos and enchiladas. With Cinco de Mayo right around the corner, it is a great time ...
DIY Mango Fruit Leather
I was so inspired by the Kids in the Kitchen cooking class that I attended with the National Mango Board last week that when I saw the small yellow Ataulfo or champagne mangos on sale for $1 each at my local Whole Foods, I stocked up. Faced with a crop of ripening mangos and an upcoming Chicago Food Swap, I put my DIY hat on and decided to try my ...
How to Cook with Mangos (Beyond Just Smoothies)
Today's post is sponsored by the National Mango Board and I was selected to participate in this campaign by The Motherhood. Kids from India to Ecuador feast on mangos. In fact, mangos are the most consumed fruit in the world. But what about American kids? Do they love mangos? Do you know how to use this delicious and versatile fruit beyond ...
Sweet Potato Fries with Spinach and Mint Yogurt Sauce
This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #SpringIntoFlavor #CollectiveBias Sweet potato fries with wilted spinach and yogurt-mint sauce. Sounds like a restaurant dish, doesn't it? But you can whip up this perfect spring side dish in your kitchen in under thirty minutes. The ...
Mexican Matzo Brei
For many people observing Passover, breakfast is the hardest meal of the day. Oatmeal is out. Cereal seriously not okay. Toast verboten. Granola a no-go. So, what is left to eat in the morning? On weekdays, my husband downs some yogurt and an apple, which is a very healthy, but maybe not the most satisfying, breakfast. The truth is, for those ...
Passover Dessert: Mini Pavlovas with Lemon Curd
This is the dessert that I wish I had made for my Seder last year: bite-sized meringues shells filled with luscious lemon curd and topped with a juicy strawberry. The dessert that I actually made was saucer-sized meringues filled with sliced, macerated strawberries and topped with a dollop of lemon curd. They looked great . . . but there was too ...
Passover Menu: Chicken with Dried Fruit
The Jewish festival of Passover begins next Friday, April 3, at sundown. Fridays are busy nights around here so I am planning to host a Seder on the second night of Passover, which thankfully is somewhat traditional. It’s still hectic to host what amounts to a large dinner party, so I am already starting to prepare some of the dishes ahead of time ...
Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cream Pie
JR has loved the game Skylanders for years. He collects the figurines; plays the game with his friends on our Wii and proudly wears his favorite Skylanders shirt to school every week. So when General Mills teamed up with Skylanders to offer an exclusive Skystones game free with selected boxes of cereal, JR wanted to collect them all. JR loves ...
Cheddar Horseradish Spread
With warmer weather in sight, March Madness on television and spring holidays right around the corner, it is time to invite some friends over. My husband and I have attended several cocktail parties in the past few weeks to meet prospective members of our pool and tennis club and seeing so many friends and neighbors after the long winter reminded ...
Chocolate-Orange Cream Pie
One of the features of my upcoming book on food swapping are profiles of nineteen food swap groups around North America and Great Britain. I love this aspect of the book and thoroughly enjoyed interviewing all the different food swap organizers. But when it came time to write the profiles, I struggled. I was not certain how to approach it. Should I ...
Chocolate-Covered Blueberry Bread Pudding
This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #LoveDoveFruits #CollectiveBias You know how kids ask, as soon as they have finished eating: "Can I have dessert?" At least my kids do that. The truth is, I feel much the same myself. Forty years on this earth have not diminished my sweet ...
How to Make Hamantaschen
In the interest of keeping it real, I will confess that I tried very hard this week to create a recipe for salted caramel Hamantaschen. Doesn't that sound amazing? Well, don't get too attached because I never managed to make it work. First, the caramel leaked out. Then my attempt to make empty Hamantaschen shells that I could fill with caramel ...
Hamantaschen Galette
Wednesday at sundown, the Jewish festival of Purim begins. Purim commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people from an evil government minister, named Haman, who plotted to destroy the Jewish community in ancient Persia. In essence, Purim is the Jewish “carnival” holiday — every culture has one — where people are encouraged to dress in costume, ...
Dominique Ansel’s Banana Bread (Sort Of)
When I saw that the inventor of the Cronut had created a banana bread recipe, I expected that recipe to make the best banana bread I had ever tasted. I probably expected it to be fattening. (Not as fattening as it turned out to be.) I did not expect that recipe for banana bread to be even easier than the fairly straightforward recipe that I was ...