Ah, lemon. Is there anything more fresh, more beautiful or more satisfying than a citrus-infused dish or dessert? I think not. A while back, Jared grabbed a gigantic sack of organic lemons from the grocery store; he figured we could put them to use before their time ran out. And use them we have (think…
Back to basics: Dill fingerling potatoes
In many ways, a potato is just that — a potato. It’s plain, starchy, simple and unpretentious. It doesn’t pretend to be fancy, require loads of prep work or demand an onslaught of unfamiliar ingredients to make it an edible dish. Potatoes are like the ultimate blank canvas, and it really only takes one or…
Project NYT: Garden minestrone
There are some recipes that will confuse you from the very beginning. They’ll ask you to cook something on low when medium seems more logical. They’ll call for slicing and not dicing, when you know in your gut that the vegetables will never lose their crunch in a 20-minute cook time. They’ll give you strict…
Project NYT: Parmesan crackers, no boxes allowed
In the short while since I started this blog, the words made from scratch have taken on such new meaning to me. It’s no longer just about following a recipe or venturing beyond the boxed cake mix. Rather, it’s about taking even the simplest of foods and reducing them to their bare bones ingredients: the…
Good things take time: Butternut squash risotto
Few acts in the kitchen can make an amateur cook feel quite as accomplished as the successful preparation of homemade risotto. For a single dish, you get to chop, grate, season and sauté before spending 30-plus minutes standing over the stove while tending to your impending masterpiece. Yes, it’s more labor intensive than spaghetti or…
Winterizing summer favorites: Spanish roasted potato salad
My Grandpa Smith is a jack-of-all-trades sort of guy. A general contractor by profession, he’s been building houses for years and years and knows his way around pretty much any tool or project that Bob Vila could throw at him. When I was 10 years old, he built an amazing set of furniture for my…
Ina knows her chicken. My chicken. All chicken.
Last night, as I stood over our kitchen sink clutching a whole uncooked chicken and whimpering, “Ew, ew, Jared, what’s that inside there? Can you pleeease get it out?” I realized something. This little blog has taken me all sorts of places I never thought I’d go. Jared aptly described the event as my first…
Project NYT: What’s up, Butternut?
Around our house (and probably a lot of yours, too), winter weather means soup weather. Fortunately, considering the piles of cold and snowiness we’ve been hit with this season, there’s no shortage of classics to pull out or new recipes to try. Whether it’s time-tested favorites like tomato or chicken noodle or new spins like…
Project NYT: Lentil ginger soup
Our snow day proved to be filled with all sorts of warm and cozy yesterday, with the snow day muffins starting the morning on a high note in all their cinnamon glory, followed by an evening of om-nom-nom-inducing soup that warmed us from the inside out. Nothing beats snow days and cozy nights. We should…
Project NYT: Tomato Soup I
For the past six months, Jared and I have been in search of a delicious homemade tomato soup. It sounds simple enough, right? Beyond the tomatoes, milk, salt and pepper, it didn’t seem like there could be much to the basic recipe. Of course, I’d spent at least a decade making tomato soup from a…