About a month ago we had dinner with our friends Ruthie and Forrest, and Ruthie made this kale tart. While we were eating it she totally talked it down, saying how it wasn’t as good as it normally was and she had to leave out the cranberries, etc., but I loved it. So much so [...]

The first time I tried to carve a pumpkin, I was shocked by how difficult it was and ended up having to draw the face on with a Sharpie. All those Halloweens I’d watched my dad do it in the backyard, it had looked easy; he, and the job of carving those big pumpkins, suddenly [...]

The span of days between posts is creeping to greater and greater numbers, and I’ve been going back and forth between feeling guilty and defensive, between wanting to explain/justify/apologize for this obvious lapse and wanting to ignore it, pretend it’s not happening, hoping that in the grand scheme of the blog this summer will be [...]

I’m not one of those people who likes fresh berries best by the handful. I need them doctored: sugared and baked into pies, cobblers, and crumbles; blended with yogurt and honey and juice into a smoothie; churned into an ice cream; simmered into a sauce, compote, or jam. If I was my normal self these [...]

I’d had my eye on these brownies for a while. Since Valentine’s Day, to be precise, when I thought of making them but ultimately chickened out because the absence of butter made me too nervous. Instead, I made Melissa Clark’s other brownie recipe, which is magnificently awesome, my current favorite. These brownies were never far [...]

There are two things I can count on the husband to say every time we eat a meal together at home: (1) “Did you make a pie?” (this during the last bites of the meal) and (2) “Where’s the appetizer?” (this at the moment he walks in the door and sees that I’m still sweating [...]

Wait, what is this? Oh riiight, it’s that soup I made back I have no idea when. But I remember it being good, real good, like a peanut soup but with almond butter instead of peanut butter, aromatic of fresh ginger and lime, and with collard greens and sweet potatoes thrown in for…a bit of [...]

“How the hell does one complicate a roast chicken?!?!” was the response I got when I texted my cousin that I’d made a really good roast chicken, “but it was a complicated one.” How does one turn a dish that should be simple and straightforward into a four-hour-long headache of loads of dirtied pots and [...]

Don’t be afraid! You’ve come to a happy place. Although I get why you might be wary and confused, because why on earth am I making gluten-free vegan cookies? Well. I have this gig where I test recipes from upcoming cookbooks, which I’ve mentioned before, and when my editor (I love saying that, “my editor”) gave me [...]

When you make these carrots (and you will make them), do yourself a favor and double the recipe because it’s really disappointing first of all to only have a teensy bit of them left over and more disappointing still to come home after a long, hard day of work and gym to discover that that [...]

Tortilla Soup is a movie. It’s also a soup.

No one wants to look at cookies right now, I know I know I know. It’s officially diet and exercise season. But I suspect that some peoples’ resolutions for the new year included being more organized, planning ahead, and procrastinating less, and so this is how I’ll spin the macaroons: it’s never too early to [...]

When we’re feeling like we’ve been eating “badly” and need to cleanse, we eat fish to reset ourselves. It totally works. But I hardly ever get creative with it because I like fish best when it’s simply roasted, seasoned with herbs, fresh or dried, whatever I have, and finished off with plenty of lemon juice. [...]

I have a huge pink recipe binder full of clippings from magazines and newspapers and annotated printouts from blogs and emails, as well as handwritten recipes on index cards from grandmothers, but I’m pretty sure this is the only recipe in there that I actually typed up as a Word document, printed out, and three-hole [...]

I have a real big problem with Indian food, not because it gave me horrible, debilitating food poisoning the last two days of my honeymoon in Africa, but because whenever I try to cook it at home it just outright refuses to taste like anything even close to authentic. Great Indian food, especially when it’s [...]

Wow! Way to take completely inedible, well-past-their-prime tomatoes and turn them into a sweet and lovely concoction you’ll want to dump onto just about everything. To the husband, “everything” includes salads. Salads composed of green leaf lettuce and crumbled blue cheese. I do not endorse this. Instead, you should use this chutney as an excuse [...]

I’m particularly fond of any recipe with dried fruit and nuts (wonder why?), and this is one I’ve made multiple times. The husband finds the greens a bit bitter, which they are. But he seems particularly sensitive to bitterness whereas I handle it pretty well. Like it, even.

This is, to me, what cheesesteak pie is to the husband. It’s the best thing ever. Since I made it, I’ve been thinking about it nonstop. I want to eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In fact, I’m eating it right now. I think I may have to go out and buy another butternut squash [...]

And it was at this moment that I started snickering and called the husband into the kitchen to ask him what these looked like, and he took a cupcake and put it under his butt and made a farting noise and presented it to me and we both started cracking up and I named these [...]

My first encounter with turkey legs was traumatic. Early on in our courtship, the husband and I took a trip to Disney World (yes, we were still basically children). And there was this place in the Magic Kingdom, in Frontierland, that sold smoked turkey legs. We figured they had to be amazing because all the obese [...]

Ahh. It does feel good to be back. I just spent 17 days in Israel with no computer, no cell phone, and no kitchen, feeling completely cut off from my normal life in the best possible way. What I treasure most about vacations are the totally inane daily decisions that take on such importance. Should [...]

I’m always surprised when people tell me they’ve never made hummus. It’s such a good candidate for home cooks because the payoff is so great. Homemade hummus takes almost no time at all and is far superior to anything you can buy at the grocery store, not to mention much more economical. Plus, there are so many [...]

The husband requested lamb chops for dinner, and I do everything he says. I wanted to make some sort of pesto to go with the lamb, and this one, a variation of what is apparently a mainstay of Georgian national cuisine, intrigued me. There was cilantro, parsley, apricots, walnuts, walnut oil…yum, yum, yum, yum, and [...]

“Good not great” (as in Dwight Schrute’s quick assessment of Michael Scott’s breath) is the phrase that keeps popping into my head when I think of this sorbet. It does the trick, the “trick” being that it satisfies the craving for something sweet and cold when you’re feeling too fat and/or guilty to have ice [...]

Summer is all about the cold or room temperature side dishes whipped up in the kitchen while (at the risk of being sexist here) your manly man is manning the grill. Here’s a classic three-bean salad for all your summer barbecue needs. It’s very sweet and tangy, with black-eyed peas added for a Southern twist, and because they’re [...]

I got a request for more main courses on the site and so, in an effort to provide one person with near-instant gratification, I whipped up one of my old standbys, and I’m just going to have out with it: this is a Rachael Ray recipe. Yes, yes, we all despise her. We detest her stupid [...]

It’s difficult to resist a pile of edibles that’s literally overflowing onto the asphalt, so when I spied these sugar snaps I felt compelled to help reduce the bounty. I like sugar snaps because they’re refreshing, and this recipe highlights their cool crunchiness. A recent unpleasant experience with fresh mint left me wary of the herb. (Fyi, fresh mint ice cream [...]

I care less and less about dinner these days. I would never skip it outright, but I’ve begun to think of it as a mere stepping stone on the way to dessert. While the husband would rather have another helping of stir-fry or pasta or chicken or what-have-you, I’m gobbling down my main course in eager [...]

Sometimes this happens. I’ll be on the fence about posting a recipe, and then I’ll have the leftovers, and realize that oh, yes. People must be told of this. Now I am not a fan of fennel in its raw form (licorice, blech!), which is what drew me to this dish initially. Clotilde, creator of [...]

Why is tuna so often paired with Asian seasonings, more than any other fish? Probably the same reason that duck is so frequently paired with cherries. The flavors just work. It’s safe. It’s familiar. And that’s exactly how I felt when I tasted this tuna. It was just right. The marinade (rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, ginger, garlic, lime, sesame oil) didn’t [...]

I normally steer clear of stir-fries. Anything that requires me to move quickly in the kitchen is automatically ruled out because, according to most people who know me, I am as slow-moving as a sloth. Or a snail. Or a slug. Your choice, I’ll accept comparison to any of these fine creatures any day. However, [...]

Who is David Chang? David Chang is the much-lauded chef/owner of a smattering of restaurants here in New York, all named Momofuku something-or-other. Last fall, he published a highly anticipated cookbook that revealed a bunch of the recipes from his restaurants. I’ve never laid eyes on the cookbook, nor have I been to any of the [...]

I say it every year and I’m going to say it again this year, probably way more times than anyone wants to hear it: Passover desserts need not be repulsive. The trick, in my opinion, to a good Passover dessert is keep it simple. Truffles. Macaroons. Ice cream. Candied nuts. Flourless chocolate cake. All of [...]

After cooking salmon a bunch of times by coating it with salt and olive oil and searing it in a pan to give it a nice crispy crust, I swore off that method forever because it would stink up my apartment for days. It scarred me. It was the reason why I staunchly refused to [...]

When we were in Portugal (waaayyy back in the day, 2004), we ate seafood for pretty much every meal. There were all of these outdoor restaurants lining the streets, and at many of them, they’d have their fresh seafood displayed in a refrigerator case and you could choose exactly which piece of fish you wanted. [...]

I hope you guys realize how lucky you are. You are gradually becoming privy to all my granola bar trade secrets. If anyone attempts to publish a compendium of these recipes for profit, I will hunt you down and I will kill you. (Yes, that is a threat.) These are intended for personal use only. [...]

When I was putting together my recipe index the other day, I was kind of horrified. I mean, I know that I made carrots and spinach and fish and bok choy last week and they just didn’t make it to the blog (you feel so cheated right now…I know), but what must you people think? What [...]

Since I make my own granola bars, it logically follows that I make my own granola, right? Right. Alright. Glad we’re on the same page. Interestingly enough (or at least interesting to me, since I’m fascinated by my own granola trajectory and everything that has to do with granola in general), the bars preceded the granola, and it wasn’t until I [...]

It’s time to relate a painful and shameful story from my past. It’s a story that only the people who are closest to me know, an incident that drudges up such shameful pain that I have tried to block it out these past few years. But you can’t escape your past, people, and you can’t undo [...]