It’s okay to snack. Really. Snacks are part of a healthy diet. No one should be expected to go from lunch until dinner without some fuel, especially given how busy weekday afternoons can be. What do you think will happen when you sit down to dinner utterly famished? That’s exactly how overeating happens. In fact, smart snacking may be the key to ...
Holiday Breakfast: Radicchio and Squash Quiche
The holidays mean houseguests. While we all plan ahead for the traditional holiday dinners and festive New Year's Eve parties, no one remembers to plan for breakfast. But if you have houseguests, you have to feed them lunch, dinner and breakfast. So what do you make for the day after the big party? You know, when everyone wakes up and wants yet ...
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 ...
Thanksgiving Menu: Apple, Fennel and Bleu Cheese Salad
Thanksgiving is only a few days away. It is time to finalize that holiday menu, or, if you are not hosting, to decide on the perfect dish to bring as your contribution to the feast. Let me take this opportunity to remind hosts and guests alike that every Thanksgiving table needs something fresh and crunchy to contrast with all that stuffing and ...
Butternut Squash and Kale Quiche for Fall
There can be no doubt that fall has arrived and my weekly visit to the farmers market is tinged with bitterness as I count the weeks until the market closes for another year. This weekend, I made sure to stock up on green tomatoes -- and expect an unusual green tomato recipe later this week -- apples, pears and other seasonal produce. Around ...
Meme’s Pickled Cucumbers
I write a lot about my Jewish heritage and how it has shaped me as a cook, but I have another set of culinary influences on my mother's side of the family and those influences are Swedish. I had one Jewish grandmother and one Swedish grandmother. So I get to claim both culinary traditions. My Swedish half's time to shine is Christmas, which ...
Butternut Squash & Kale Quiche
At this time of year, many people are looking for satisfying meatless meals. Perhaps your family is observing Lent. Perhaps you are simply trying to eat healthier or in a more environmentally-friendly manner as part of your New Year's resolutions. My family are not vegetarians but we do eat several meatless meals a week in part for health ...
Sweet Potato Latkes with Harissa Yogurt
This week, Jewish families around the world will gather together to celebrate Hanukkah, the festival of lights. Hanukkah commemorates the victory of a small group of Jews, the Maccabees, over the army of the Greek King Antiochus in the second century BCE. After the Jews drove the Greeks out of Judea, they attempted to restore their temple, which ...
Potato-Parsnip Puree with Brown Butter
Today's post is sponsored by Door to Door Organics, an organic grocery delivery service in Chicago. Keep reading to learn how you can get $10 off your first order and win a $50 gift certificate from Door to Door Organics. Along with stuffing, I am constantly tinkering with the recipe for my Thanksgiving mashed potatoes. I've tried garlic ...
Apple, Fennel and Cheddar Quiche
Recently, my friends at Cabot Creamery Cooperative and their Vermont neighbors King Arthur Flour challenged a group of bloggers to come up with their best quiche recipe. At stake is a package of goodies from these two iconic brands. They are calling this contest #QuicheFeast. Well, it just so happens that I love quiche and I make it quite ...
Fall Vegetable Soup
It is such a bountiful time of year at the farmers market! I come home every Saturday laden down with red and yellow peppers, purple eggplant, green zucchini, orange carrots, scarlet beets, tan butternut squash, and even coal-black radishes. Somehow I still spend less than I did in July when I could easily blow a quarter of my walking-around money ...
Rosh Hashanah Recipes: Carrot Tzimmes
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year holiday begins at sundown on September 13. One of my favorite holidays to cook for, Rosh Hashanah is a joyous occasion and the holiday meals are festive. Traditional Rosh Hashanah foods are often sweet to express our wish for a sweet new year or round to symbolize the circle of life in which one year ends and ...
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 ...
Moroccan Fava Bean Dip
I buy ingredients on impulse. Buy first, investigate later; that's my motto. I never pick something up in the store, turn it over in my hands and then put it down with a "but what would I do with it?" If it interests me, I buy it. I will figure out what to do with it later. Why else do I have this collection of cookbooks that long ago outgrew my ...
Parsley Root Puree
My latest obsession is parsley root, a long, skinny root vegetable that resembles a white carrot or a parsnip. You will always be able to recognize parsley root however: just look for the bunches of -- you guessed it -- parsley growing out of the top. Yes, parsley root is the root of the ubiquitous herb. While admittedly root vegetables are more ...
Panzanella (Tuscan Bread Salad)
This recipe is everything summer cooking should be. It uses the bounty of the season. It is made ahead of time. And it's best served room temperature. Easy, fresh and beautiful to look at -- what is this amazing recipe you ask? It's panzanella, an Italian bread salad. So many cuisines have ways to use up leftover bread -- from French toast ...
Beginner Peach Jam
We have all had the experience of watching our farmers' market or CSA fruits and vegetables start to get a bit long in the tooth as the week wears on. Maybe you bought two quarts of peaches thinking you would make a cobbler and then time got away from you. Maybe the member of your household who you can usually count on to eat all those cherries ...
Penne with Pesto and Peas
In one of her early books, Ina Garten of the Barefoot Contessa fame, has a recipe for pasta with pesto and peas. Now don't get me wrong: I love Ina as much as the next girl. To this day, I am holding out for an invitation to spend the day cooking with her in the Hamptons. But her recipe for pasta with pesto and peas is all kinds of wrong. ...
Arugula with Grilled Peaches, Hazelnuts and Parmesan
The July meeting of the Chicago Food Swap is less than two weeks away. I am very excited about this particular swap. Not only is it the height of the season for local produce, which means all kinds of delicious homemade and homegrown swap items, but we also have an amazing sponsor for this event: Villa Gabriella Organic. Villa Gabriella imports ...
Grilled Mediterranean Chickpea Burgers with Creamy Harissa
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 ...
Roasted Garlic Hummus for National Hummus Day
Did you know that May 13 was National Hummus Day? I for one did not. But why not celebrate this made-up holiday with everyone's favorite chick pea spread? After all, hummus is delicious, healthy, and a great source of vegetable-based protein. It works well as a dip with veggies or as a sandwich spread. Yes, hummus is a kitchen ...
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 ...
How to Shop at a Farmers Market
With May right around the corner, farmers' markets are starting to open up all around the country. Sadly, I still have a few more weeks until my beloved Oak Park Farmers' Market, home of delicious, freshly made doughnuts, begins. I can hardly contain my excitement. For those of you in warmer climes, the wait may be much shorter. As a home ...
Arugula with Slow-Roasted Cherry Tomatoes and Burrata
It is barely spring. Too soon even for the lead-off hitters of the local produce line-up: fava beans, asparagus and rhubarb. Yet, I am so weary of root vegetables, winter squash and even the exotic citrus that brought sun to bleak January and cruel February. I can't even look at that arugula-fennel-blood orange salad one more time. Although ...
Better than Take-Out Vegetable Biryani
Sometimes the tail wags the dog around here. I had a big batch of cucumber and mint raita sitting in the refrigerator -- a recipe that I had developed for my upcoming cookbook on food swapping -- and needed to come up with a way to use it. I have always enjoyed heaping cool, refreshing raita on biryani, the spicy South Asian mixed rice dish, when ...