Recipe: Fresh and Easy Rustic Gazpacho (a summertime win)!
I had avoided cold soup for years, but this fresh, easy, rustic gazpacho is a winner when the temperatures are soaring...or when they're not.
I had avoided cold soup for years, but this fresh, easy, rustic gazpacho is a winner when the temperatures are soaring...or when they're not.
Meal planning can feel like just one more “to-do,” or it can trigger anxiety from past dieting attempts. On the positive side, meal planning can help you meaningfully connect with your food.
If you’re like most people, you're limiting trips to the grocery store and how much time you spend in the store, sticking to replenishing basic staple items. If that's starting to feel a little lackluster, here are some ways to liven up some of your pantry essentials without needing to shop more often.
Are white beans the little black dress of the pantry? Maybe! Lately, I've been using dried beans as much as possible, but I always keep some canned white beans on hand for the 10 reasons I'm going to tell you about.
Just as a disorganized, cluttered kitchen can discourage you from cooking, so can a disorganized, crowded fridge. My top reasons to be more of a minimalist in the refrigerator-stocking department.
I love to cook, but I’m also busy, and sometimes those two facts of life don’t merge neatly. Especially when working out of a small galley kitchen in a rental apartment, for the time being.
My latest column in The Seattle Times is about grain bowls. While grains are the featured player in this food symphony, beans also play an integral part in the bowls I prepare at home. Does it matter if you used canned beans, or cook your own beans from dried? Let's discuss.
Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and in many of my patients, I see a mixture of joy and angst. Much of that angst is because holiday meals have a reputation (often earned) for being indulgent and less-than-nutritious. But when you stop and take a closer look, there are many perfectly nutritious foods that we traditionally serve during the fall and winter holidays.
I love it when I see an intriguing recipe and I have everything for it on hand! When the latest email from Oldways landed in my inbox last week with the subject line "Fruit can be savory, too" I was hooked. I clicked on the link and saw the recipe for the Sorghum & Blues Salad and I said "I must make this."
My latest On Nutrition column in The Seattle Times, "Coconut oil: It's really not that good for you," is my attempt to set the record straight on whether we should be eating coconut oil with abandon (hint: we shouldn't). As a result, I received a number of questions via email regarding my suggestion in that column to use olive oil as a primary cooking fat.
I blogged about my recipe for rustic gazpacho when I first adopted it into my repertoire back in 2014. Much like ratatouille (more on this soon), it inexplicably fell out of favor after a few intense years. How fortuitous that I was re-inspired to make this fresh, lovely, easy soup as I was flipping through Nancy Harmon Jenkins "Virgin Territory: Exploring the World of Olive Oil" before giving a talk on the Mediterranean diet.
I don't remember exactly when I first heard of hygge (HOO-geh)...sometime last year I think. My first thought was that this was the next trend to replace the "life-changing magic of tidying up." My second thought was that I was intrigued.
When I create a recipe for my blog or my newspaper column, I could calculate calories, carbs, fat, protein and so-on, but after a significant amount of thought, I decided not to, and here's why.
OK, I've decided it's high time to do a pantry challenge. Mostly because MY pantry has become extremely challenging, full to the point where we sometimes don't know what we have because we can't see it. This has lead to buying duplicate items, which is not only annoying but makes the problem worse!
I've recently expressed my opinion about the futility of creating a static meal plan (eat this on Monday, this on Tuesday, and so on...with no deviations!) for anyone other than myself. But dynamic plans, where you have a chance to easily make substitutions, is another thing entirely.
Last week, 20-or-so local dietitians gathered at Blue Ribbon Cooking School to learn how to cook Nordic cuisine with Siggi Hilmarsson, the man behind Siggi's yogurt. The food was delicious and nutritious...just the way food should be!
For some reason, I haven't made this black bean & turkey chili for ages. I decided it was just the thing to make Monday after the end of a long day of writing. It's the perfect sort of dish for when you are feeling brain tired and uninspired...it's simple, tasty, hard to mess up, and doesn't require too much chopping!
My interest in the chickpea flour, water and olive oil pancake known as socca peaked when we were planning our first-ever trip to the south of France. Socca is popular not just in southern France and Italy. The traditional—and best—way to cook it is in a wood-fired oven (mobile or otherwise), but you can easily make do with your home oven using a skillet or pizza pan.
I know how much better my weeks go when I meal plan, and having tasty leftovers (in the fridge or freezer) is an important part of my planning. This is why I count Ellie Kreiger's newest book 'You Have it Made: Delicious, Healthy, Do-Ahead Meals' as an important resource.
I like dishes that are flavorful but simple, and that's what I had in mind when I devised this recipe for The Seattle Times. I'd been meaning to experiment with sorghum grain for quite a while, having read about it here and there, but when the offer of free samples came my way, I decided the time was now.
When a chef counts Julia Child and M.F.K. Fisher as his personal mentors, you can bet he has some interesting stories. And these stories are more than just stories...they have relevance for how we cook and eat today.
I know, I know…I need another cookbook like I need the proverbial hole in the head. Believe me, there are many cookbooks I “try out” from the library that don’t meet my standards and/or don’t add anything unique to my cookbook library. But there are three books I’ve vetted recently that may actually make the cut.
Before I get to this delicious Potato-Purslane Salad recipe, I want to provide a little commentary on last week’s news that eating potatoes increased the risk of developing high blood pressure. Whenever I see a headline-grabbing nutrition story such as this one, I make sure I find and read the original research paper to see what’s what.
My curiosity about meal kit delivery services recently got the best of me, and I decided to start by trying out Purple Carrot, the vegan meal delivery service that Mark Bittman left The New York Times for last fall. Ironically, on the day my order was delivery, I saw the news that Bittman had left Purple Carrot. When I tasted meal number one later that evening, I was pretty sure I knew why.
Last weekend I was in Los Angeles for a culinary conference which meant (oh, the irony), that I had no time to do food prep for the coming week. This meant buying my work lunches (salads, but still) and coming up with dinners on the fly. This weekend, in the interest of making my food week go smoother, I got busy in the kitchen after breakfast.
More of my interviews with David Ludwig, MD, PhD, author of Always Hungry (a book grounded in the science that will hopefully put to rest the mistakes and misinformation of the low-fat era) and his wife, Chef Dawn Ludwig, who developed the easy, healthy, delicious recipes in the book.
I'm fessing up: My 2015 Cookbook Challenge has kind of fizzled out. I think it was a worthy endeavor, for reasons I've previously discussed, namely that I revisited cookbooks that had been languishing on my shelves and cooked some wonderful dishes, but lately my foodie thoughts have been running to magazines, websites and new-to-me cookbooks from the library.
A delicious, hearty lentil and mushroom recipe that's perfect for Meatless Monday, adapted from one of the many fabulous recipes on the Canadian Lentils website. One of the best culinary discoveries I made last week at FNCE!
If you've been reading my blog for a while or have perused my website, you know the drill: I love cooking, I own more than 200 cookbooks, blah, blah, blah. That's all true, except sometimes cooking's the last thing I want to do. Quite honestly, sometimes all I want to do is eat something delicious and nourishing before getting on with the rest of my evening agenda.
My first thought as I sat in the audience at Town Hall waiting for J. Kenji Lopez-Alt to come on stage to talk about "The Science Behind Better Cooking" was that the audience was a perfect microcosm of old and new Seattle. My second thought was "Dammit, another cookbook I'm going to have to buy!"
I'm excited to be attending the International Food Blogger Conference (IFBC) this weekend in lovely downtown Seattle. My blog is 5+ years old and I am just as devoted to it as I was when I started it (it's a true labor of love).
A patient was telling me that she was thinking about taking some cooking classes (she lives alone and really doesn't like to cook very much), and I mentioned that I'd just signed up for a few classes through PCC Natural Markets. "I'm surprised that YOU would be taking cooking classes," she said.
Last night I went to hear Leanne Brown, author of Good and Cheap: How to Eat Well on $4/Day, speak at Town Hall, in conversation with Seattle-based journalist Rebekah Denn (two-time James Beard Award-winner for food writing).
Even though I really wanted to go home and chill after work yesterday, I hopped off light rail early to walk to the Columbia City PCC Natural Markets for a "Elements of Taste" cooking class. As I suspected, I was glad that I did, because the class was awesome.
I hope you had a great holiday weekend! My kitchen no longer looks like a
In the fall, ones thoughts turn to soups, stews and baking...especially now that Seattle's wild
This cookbook wrap up is a little overdue, which is good because, honestly, I didn't
Two of the books I selected for this month's challenge were no-brainers. It feels natural
If there is any theme to emerge so far with my 2015 Cookbook Challenge, is
Now that my new stove is finally ready to be delivered (actually scheduling delivery is
As I threatened promised, my July cookbook picks provide plenty of opportunity to not cook.
I flew home early yesterday from a weekend camping trip (I had to work today,
In spite of being conspired against by a broken, morse code-emitting stove and a spate
Read more about this super-nutritious vegetable!
A few recipes from around the web that I'm craving:A tale of two egg saladsMoroccan
Since June-uary has given way to early summer in Seattle (with temps just shy of
The term superfood gets thrown around with impunity sometimes, but salmon is one food that
Happy June-uary! (Actually, I don't mind the return of the Seattle rain so much...it's good
My April Cookbook Challenge bled into May, largely because I’ve barely been home this month
Another month, another three cookbooks. I didn't fully delve into all three of my March
My Cookbook Challenge proved to be a valuable tool for accountability this week when I
I know I'm supposed be cooking from this month's three anointed cookbooks (and I am),
"Isn't there supposed to be a month between January and March?" you ask. Why yes,
Happy Tuesday! I had a nice feature-slash-column in Sunday's Seattle Times, "Yummy slow-cooker recipes promote
I don't know if you ran across the bit of news the other day that
Happy Monday! I hope you had a chance to read my latest On Nutrition column
I make no secret that I own a lot of cookbooks. In spite of having
In yesterday's post, I talked about some changes I want to make on this blog
Here are a few recipes that have caught my eye lately:Chickpea, Feta and Parsley SaladChicken
Behind the scenes of my day spent interviewing, and cooking with, Christina Arokiasamy, chef, cooking instructor and author of The Spice Merchant's Daughter. This woman knows her way around a spice rack!
Happy Monday! If you didn't see my On Nutrition column in yesterday's Seattle Times, "How
I meant to write this post before Thanksgiving, but, well, you know, time getting away
Let me start by saying that not all holiday food is supposed to be totally
Happy Monday! If you haven't had a chance, check out my latest On Nutrition column
I'm going to start teaching some cooking classes in the not-too-distant future (I have one
When I attend the Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo (FNCE) each year, I enjoy
This time of the year, as the weather grows cooler and the leaves start turning
One of yesterday's FNCE highlights was getting to meet Ellie Krieger and get a free,
I've been accumulating quite a digital "pile" of hearty-but-healthy recipes of late, so it feels
Happy Monday! If you didn't read my On Nutrition column in Sunday's Seattle Times, "Why—and
I'm of the firm belief, borne through study of behavior theory, direct observation and personal
When the heat of summer starts to fade, my thoughts turn to cooking. I just
I sometimes take leftover soup to work in the cooler months, but never in the summer...until I was inspired by an interview with Penelope Cruz in InStyle to make gazpacho, a dish I've sort of avoided thus far in my life. I had a mountain of ripe tomatoes in my garden to use up, and I was getting tired of spending hours cooking them down into tomato sauce. I wanted something quick, easy and delicious!
Happy Monday! I meant to share this TEDx talk by registered dietitian Jen Haugen, "How
On Sunday, I had the opportunity to get together with my sometime partner in podcasting,
Happy Monday! I haven't done a Meatless Monday post in a while, but I made this easy, tasty, meatless recipe last week, planned to share it with you anyway, and then thought, "Hey, why not share it on a Monday?"
This week is the second annual Eating Psychology Online Conference, and I absorbed as much
This is the first summer in five years that I'm not juggling work and school.
For no rhyme or reason whatsoever, I've never had Malaysian food. I've never been to
Sometimes, I love cooking from a recipe, but other times...I just don't. Like, when I've been busy, or I'm tired, or I've broken my brain working on some project or other. Basically, when I'd rather operate on autopilot rather than think or read my way to a homecooked meal.
I have a horrible admission to make.Every single year for the last, oh, 15 or
When we take quick trips to San Francisco, a farmer's market is always on our itinerary (specifically, we beeline to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market), but taking home gobs of gorgeous produce is usually out of the question...except on this trip.
I've been on a cooking kick since we got home from Paris. I blame this
Have you ever followed a delicious-looking recipe to the letter and felt a little let down by the finished product? Like, it needs a little...something. Me, too. Here are some tips from culinary wizard and cookbook author Rebecca Katz for boosting and balancing the flavor in your recipes.
I have shelves full of cookbooks and cabinets full of Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Food &
March is National Nutrition Month®, and I thought I would kick things off with this
If you're the type of person who doesn't like to make a big hullabaloo about
With a stash of more than 200 cookbooks, at least that many back issues of
Thursday was the first time in six years that I hosted Thanksgiving. While I didn't
Happy Thanksgiving, or Thanksgivukkah, a day early. I'm hosting this year, so preparations are already
Happy Halloween! Yesterday I talked about the science part of the American Institute for Cancer Research
I'd been meaning to read Darya Pino Rose's Foodist for months, and finally had the
I admit, I'm embarrassed. I openly endorse having a well-stocked pantry, but things are a
I'm a pretty good cook. I have more than 200 cookbooks, piles of back issues
I had planned to write a specific post for today, but decided it made more
I think it's safe to say that most people don't have unlimited food budgets. Even
Several months ago, I decided to investigate some of the quick-cooking grains available at Trader
The actual arrival of fall is less than a week away, and while I've been
Long time, no see!Wow, I really needed a vacation. We did some crazy flying back
One definite upside to my current food service internship rotation is that I get to