Crispy honey & wine roasted Brussels sprouts
A few weeks ago, my sister sent me a (late-night) text message asking me to come up with a recipe for crispy honey or teriyaki Brussels sprouts. Happily, about a week before that, I’d had dinner with a friend at a restaurant downtown which had crispy sprouts on its menu. They paired theirs with a … Read more
Black Bean, Sweet Potato, and Chipotle Quesadilla
Even though I’d like to think that working & studying at home leaves plenty of time to cook creative, hot lunches, I usually fall back on a reliable favorite: a lightly-toasted quesadilla. This version is an incredibly satisfying vegetarian substitute for the classic chicken and cheese combination. Don’t be too skeptical about the sweet potato + … Read more
Chinese Chicken Salad
Back when I was interning at Cook’s Illustrated last summer, this was one of my favorite dishes to test out in the kitchens. The test cooks would make batch after batch, making revisions and listening to our feedback as the process went along. The romaine and cabbage make this a colorful winter salad, but … Read more
Pasta with a creamy roasted red pepper & goat cheese sauce
So often, when I think about what I want to make for dinner, I crave creamy pasta. Obviously, loading up a plate of pasta with heavy cream and cheese isn’t going to work out in the long term, so a lot of my experiments over the fall and winter months have been playing around with … Read more
Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
I developed these chewy oatmeal cookies for February’s Recipe Redux, the monthly cooking challenge I joined last year. The challenge this month was to develop a recipe that highlights chocolate, and sweets, I have to say, aren’t my strong suit. When it comes to sweet versus salty, I’d pick salty every day. Baking is typically … Read more
Sunny-side up eggs atop baked potato pancakes
Eggs and toast are David and my usual weekend breakfast fare. Every Saturday and Sunday morning we choose between scrambled versus over-easy, toast a couple slices of bread, and put on a pot of coffee. The Recipe Redux challenge for this month is breakfast, so I’ve been experimenting with egg-based dishes on weekend mornings instead. … Read more
Sage and Walnut Risotto
I created this recipe based on the recent Food52 challenge to combine the flavors of sage and walnuts. Toasting the walnuts and gently crisping the sage in the rendered pancetta fat transforms the ingredients and intensifies their flavors. After traveling for the holidays last month, I came home to a DVR loaded with episodes of … Read more
Saveur’s Pickled Shrimp
I made this pickled shrimp recipe from Saveur magazine at least four times over the past few weeks, and I’m sure they’ll keep finding their way into my menu planning throughout the spring and summer months, too. My family always serves shrimp on Christmas Eve, and this works well as an elegant holiday appetizer. I … Read more
Cheddar & Black Pepper Scones
I returned Saturday from a great 2-week vacation to the Midwest, visiting both David’s and my family for Christmas. It was a great holiday, in part because I found this waiting for me under the tree on Christmas morning (thank you David!). I am actually an owner (shareholder) of the Green Bay Packers. Of course … Read more
Cornbread Stuffing with Chorizo & Sweet Italian Sausage
Last week was extremely busy at school, with little time to cook, even less time to take pictures, and next to no daylight in which to take good pictures. Now, with a little less on my plate, I got to spend the weekend testing out new recipes that I’m considering making for my family’s Christmas … Read more
Cheesy Chicken Casserole with Kale
A tale of two pastas: one decadent and delicious, the other a healthier bake that still tastes impossibly fresh and cheesy. After David and I planned our Thanksgiving menu, we bent our heads together over the grocery lists and divvied up the ingredients we needed to buy by store: Whole Foods will have happy turkeys … Read more
Homemade Soft Pretzels
Clearly Thanksgiving was the big event this week, but I was also really looking forward to the Packers-Lions game, too. Since the game started at 12:30, David and I didn’t start our Thanksgiving cooking until late that afternoon. Since we had a small gathering to feed, we opted for a tiny 8-pound turkey, which roasted … Read more
Sweet Potato Muffins
Once I started my Master’s program in nutrition, I started following several dietitians’ blogs to help me stay in touch with what’s going on in the field: they blog about food, research, trends, and often include vignettes from their experiences with patients. The Nutrition Blog Network is where I first came across several of the … Read more
Hasselback Potatoes
These are the best, absurdly easy potatoes I’ve made in awhile. I saw the idea posted on a friend’s pinterest page and thought they looked super simple and whimsical. Over the last few weeks I’ve made them twice with great success: once as a run-through of sorts to see if they really were as easy … Read more
Figs, Goat Cheese, and Arugula Pizza
I put this pizza together last week before our book club meeting just to get a quick dinner in before our evening out. Book club on an empty stomach can be a dangerous idea: English majors (who now earn full-time salaries) tend to bring along lots of wine. We had about an hour between getting … Read more
