Last-of-Summer Marinara Sauce

Cooking and Eating with the Seasons
There’s not much to a basic marinara sauce: Tomatoes cooked down with onion and garlic, then seasoned with salt, pepper and herbs.  In summer, a fresh tomato sauce doesn’t go much beyond that.  Moreover, it’s kept light by cooking only briefly and using sweet onions, fresh garlic and fresh basil.
Colder [...]

How to Use Up Halloween Pumpkins

Picture Recipe:  Pumpkin Red Bean Tostadas
About now, there are likely a lot of pumpkins sitting around having the post-Halloween blues.   While most are the big Jack-O-Lantern variety with little flavor (and many of those are coated in candle wax), you may have a couple of the small, round sugar pumpkins left over from the [...]

Danger in the Gluten-Free Aisle

New gluten-free products are making it easy to live without gluten, but are we missing the bigger, teachable moment–and rewards–of a gluten-intolerance diagnosis?

“Accelerated” Slow Cooker Beans

You want the great taste of beans fresh-cooked in a slow cooker, but you forgot to soak them the night before. What do you do? Use the accelerated method.

Antioxidants and IV Drips: What They Have in Common

We know vegetables provide mega doses of antioxidants, but research now shows that those antioxidants don’t stick around very long at all. So if we want to benefit continuously from the disease-fighting benefits of antioxidants then our vegetable-eating needs to be steady and continuous, kind of like an IV drip! Join me on Twitter for fast vegetable ideas to eat all day long.

How About a Quick, “White-Free” Snack

Feel yourself getting sucked into a 4:00 p.m. “White Snack” attack? The best defense is a good offense. In this case, that means having a ready, handy, really tasty substitute for pretzels, crackers, cookies and Goldfish. Try Jicima Sticks with Black Bean Hummus instead.

What Makes Whole Grains So Hard to Eat?

Why do we give whole grains such a half-hearted embrace? Eating quality grains is no less than one of the four main pillars of healthy eating, yet it is routinely ignored. Maybe a comfort connection explains why it’s so hard saying good-bye to white.

About CSAs and Pickled Turnips

If you’re CSA member (stands for Community Supported Agriculture), then you know about surprises.  Open your weekly delivery and there could be anything inside.  Last week I got a surprise that probably no one can beat:  A jar of pickled turnips!
As a Certified Vegetable Guide (!), I’m pretty good at devising uses for odd vegetables, [...]

In a recipe, how much is “to taste?”

Make a Recipe Just the Way You Like:  10 Tips
Salt and pepper, to taste.
1/2 tsp. chili flakes, more or less, to taste.
1/4 to 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, to taste.
Recipes seem to be littered with unhelpful directives about “to taste.”  For those of us who aren’t exactly Julia Child in the kitchen, coming across one of [...]

Summer Refreshment: Cure for the Mid-Afternoon Doldrums

It’s 3:00. The vending machine is calling, or maybe the doughnuts left over in the break room. You know it’s suicidal to indulge those cravings, but work is so boring and you’re so tired and . . . Maybe more than sugar and calories, you need refreshment—as in something cool, revitalizing and calming, like Iced Green Tea.