The whole Northeast is prepping for a gigantic wallop of a snowstorm, so, naturally, Target was a madhouse yesterday. Think holiday-sized crowds grabbing at end caps filled with water and snack foods (Super Bowl fare works well in blizzards, too, FYI), filling baskets with enough flashlights and peanut butter to last well into next week….
Comfort food to calm the chill: Fettuccine with garlic cream sauce and sautéed tomatoes
I think it’s safe to say that we’re officially in the thick of a true Boston winter. There’s snow on the ground. Snow on the rooftops. Snow in piles. Snow on the way. It’s icy and slushy and downright cold. But you know what? It’s pretty glorious. Sure, native Bostonians and more experienced East Coast…
For diners big and small: Tomato mac & cheese
By the time Beany turned 1, with a mouth full of teeth and a newfound interest in whatever sat on the plate of the person next to her, she’d pretty much lost all interest in the purees and baby foods we’d come to rely on as quick fixes for a hungry girl. Gradually, she started…
The missing zing: Balsamic-glazed penne with roasted asparagus
I love balsamic vinegar. Like, really love it. I add it to pasta, salad, rice, almost any savory dish that seems a little lacking in flavor. And I add it in quantities that would probably make most people shudder. Jared certainly likes it well enough, too, but any time I’m cooking and he sees me…
Cooking off the Cuff: A Makeshift Pasta Fresca
This probably sounds silly coming from a food blogger, but the more I write about food, the more I realize that recipes are not the be all and end all of cooking. In fact, some of my most successful kitchen moments as of late were born from my pantry rather than a cookbook. Slowly but…
Tonight we’re having pasta
You know that feeling when you make it to the end of the week, your grocery supply is depleted and the thought of going to the store or consuming any of your usual fare is met with zero enthusiasm from any party involved? That’s where Jared and I were by the end of last week….
A dinner shortcut — so good I feel guilty!
As a fairly regular fixture in the kitchen, I’ve started to somewhat pride myself on the homemade-ness of our little family’s meals, snacks and baked goods. We don’t buy cookies in boxes or muffins from the grocery store. Our freezer is shockingly empty save for a few things I’ve made ahead and frozen for another…
Pasta + cheese = comfort
Cooking can be a pretty mathematical process sometimes. For the mathletes among us, that’s probably reassuring. Knowing that spaghetti + sauce = dinner is likely just as comforting as knowing that 2 + 2 = 4. Simple cooking truths, just like simple math, are the building blocks of kitchen know-how, and though the real fun…
Don’t tease the underdog: Fettuccine with eggplant
Eggplants are inherently funny little guys. They grow in the garden along with all the other squash-like things — think zucchinis, summer squash, cucumbers and the like — but they’re slightly stranger, quite a bit tougher and decidedly less popular because they look a bit too different. Actually they remind me of little Rudolph at…