For a very long time, I really thought I hated tofu. It had a weird, soft texture, it tasted like nothing, and it fell apart easily. Why eat the stuff? But then, this recipe from Cookie and Kate came along and changed all that. She managed to take that spongy, weird brick of soybeans and turn it into crispy, crunchy cubes of flavor, and now tofu makes it on to my plate at home regularly. Try it out for your next meatless monday meal and you won't be sorry! read more[...]
Potatoes are the ultimate comfort food to me. Boil them, mash them, roast them, bake them, make pancakes or pasta out of them... the answer will always be yes. It's fortunate, then, that potatoes provide valuable nutrition as well as valuable flavor. A medium potato has more potassium than a banana, 8% of your daily fiber needs, 45% of your daily vitamin C, and 6% of your daily iron. I'm convinced that there's no wrong way to cook a potato, but this way is one of my favorites for a quick weeknight side. These have been spiced with smoky paprika and roasted until[...]
My favorite recipes to share aren't the ones that look extravagant or take hours of prep to make. They're the practical ones: the ones that I myself make on a regular basis, the ones that can be whipped up on a weeknight, the ones that take under an hour to prepare. Sometimes it's fun to spend hours cooking something new and elaborate, but most of the time, I want to cook something that's tasty, fast, and gets the job done. Like this pasta. I started making this pasta when I had my first real garden and my Super Sweet 100 tomato was going crazy, vining all over[...]
Coffee: a favorite morning drink. Most people choose a hot cup of Joe to start their day, but it's fun to mix things up with something chilled, especially in the summer months. At a lot of coffee shops, iced coffee is made by pouring hot coffee over ice cubes. This typically results in a bitter, diluted drink. Cold brew, on the other hand, is made by soaking coffee grounds in room-tempurature water overnight, slowly infusing coffee goodness. The result is smooth and delicious with no bitterness. Totally the way to go. This method does take some adva[...]
During the week, we're all about quick meals that require little prep but taste delicious, and this is certainly a dish that fits the bill. If you've ever wondered how restaurants are able to achieve that saucy, glossy, sauce-clinging-to-noodles effect that makes the dish so good, this is one way to to do it. When the pasta is several minutes away from al dente, it gets moved to the sauce with a ladle full of pasta water. As you finish cooking the noodles in the sauce, you toss, toss, toss, adding more starchy pasta water as needed to provide enough of a ba[...]