A Loaf of Bread

Start 2019 with More Whole Grains and  Less Kitchen Waste January is time for fresh starts and circling back healthful practices that have slipped away after a month or two of merry-making. The gym is crowded.  One person I know is getting up early to start a 5-minute meditation routine. Another is hitting reset with […]

Drop Everything and Make Cookies

Bourbon-Orange Pecan Pie Bars Tradition reigns at Christmas, and a tradition I treasure is baking cookies. When holiday chores loom, I’ll postpone mailing, wrapping and other to-dos, to get to work in the kitchen. I pay attention to “added sugars” and have cut back. I’m thrilled that the new food label, debuting in 2020, will […]

Food Bridges the Seasons

Butternut, Blue Cheese & Fig Galette   August seems like long ago. That’s when we made what has become an annual visit to Krueger Pepper Farm, loading up on end-of summer produce – a variety of tomatoes, including fresh San Marzanos, peppers, tomatillos, eggplant, corn and melons. First, we go into the fields to do […]

Beets are Red Hot

Beets are Red Hot Move over Caesar – beet salads are taking over as a standard starter on many restaurant menus. At least it seems so – I see a lot of creativity with beets.  If you love a good beet salad,  try my go-to recipe, Roasted Golden Beet Salad with Walnuts and Sherry-Walnut Dressing […]

Blackberry Peach Crisp

ENJOY Your Food and Company Growing your own food is deeply satisfying. Foraging for food is just as rewarding. Every summer about this time people with bags and baskets line nearby roads and trails picking wild blackberries. It can be painstaking and time-consuming to brave stickers, webs and spiders for even a pound of berries. […]

Sustainable Seafood – Give Some Love to Overlooked Fish

 Lime-Glazed Fish with Three-Pepper Tomato Sauce With halibut prices hovering near $30 per pound, it’s time to revisit a topic I wrote about 6 years ago–shining a light on overlooked fish that are tasty and nutrient-rich. Today we also consider sustainability when making seafood choices, including how fish are caught, the impact on the environment […]

Too Hot to Cook

Pandalus Jordani Make the Meal I love summer. In Seattle it’s rarely too hot to cook, but when it is, I enjoy the challenge of eating well with little to no cooking. When the weather forecast a week of temps in the toasty high 80s, I did some thinking.  Heat can rob you of energy […]

The New “Wedge Salad”

Dare to EAT Different Just this week my daughter, Allegra, asked if I wanted to have a container of her “overnight oats” for breakfast. After eating the same breakfast for a few months – she’d had enough. Good timing – I’d just read a Harvard Health Letter article, Dietary Rut? 5 Ways to Snap Out […]

I Love You as Much as Pie

Peach Pie When my daughter Allegra was 5 she said, “I love you as much as pie!” She knew early on the role of pie in our family: Pie=love. My mom, Betty, and my Nana both made pies, mostly apple. Nana had another specialty called “sunny silver.” Betty made lemon meringue, cherry and other pies […]

Sweet Traditions

Mediterranean Granola with Pistachios, Hazelnuts and Orange   The holidays are full of cherished traditions and many revolve around food treats. My second cousin Joanie called yesterday and we reminisced about Auntie’s (her mom’s) English toffee, her rich, buttery refrigerator rolls and Swedish snowball cookies (what I call Russian Tea Cakes or Mexican Wedding Cakes). […]