There are certain Mediterranean dishes that just scream "summer" and ratatouille is one of them, although honestly this dish will work any time of year, even if the staple ingredients—eggplant, zucchini and tomatoes—are not in season. I enjoy making a big batch that I can eat for days, especially when it's too hot to want to cook every evening.
I had avoided cold soup for years, but this fresh, easy, rustic gazpacho is a winner when the temperatures are soaring...or when they're not.
This light-but-hearty, highly textured salad that is refreshing and satisfying when the weather is hot, but substantial enough to be a good year-round go-to. One of my favorite parts? It keeps well for lunch leftovers.
Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and in many of my patients, I see a mixture of joy and angst. Much of that angst is because holiday meals have a reputation (often earned) for being indulgent and less-than-nutritious. But when you stop and take a closer look, there are many perfectly nutritious foods that we traditionally serve during the fall and winter holidays.
There are certain Mediterranean dishes that just scream "summer" and ratatouille is one of them, although honestly this dish will work any time of year, even if the staple ingredients—eggplant, zucchini and tomatoes—are not in season. I enjoy making a big batch that I can eat for days, especially when it's too hot to want to cook every evening.
I love it when I see an intriguing recipe and I have everything for it on hand! When the latest email from Oldways landed in my inbox last week with the subject line "Fruit can be savory, too" I was hooked. I clicked on the link and saw the recipe for the Sorghum & Blues Salad and I said "I must make this."
I blogged about my recipe for rustic gazpacho when I first adopted it into my repertoire back in 2014. Much like ratatouille (more on this soon), it inexplicably fell out of favor after a few intense years. How fortuitous that I was re-inspired to make this fresh, lovely, easy soup as I was flipping through Nancy Harmon Jenkins "Virgin Territory: Exploring the World of Olive Oil" before giving a talk on the Mediterranean diet.
When I create a recipe for my blog or my newspaper column, I could calculate calories, carbs, fat, protein and so-on, but after a significant amount of thought, I decided not to, and here's why.
These delicious, satisfying muffins are dense without being heavy, and very moist and flavorful. While the whole-wheat pastry flour packs fiber of its own, I’ve bumped it up with the addition of oat bran and whole oats.
This salad is my favorite “I have no leftovers for my work lunch, what am I going to do?” meal, because I always have tuna and beans in the pantry, and capers and olives in the fridge.
I try to brown bag my lunch everyday, and my favorite brown-bag lunch, hands down, is some sort of a salad. This salad is tasty and healthful and reasonably hearty, although you could absolutely add some leftover chicken or salmon, or part of a can of tuna. I often do. And it goes without saying that this salad will taste better when packed in a mason jar.
I've never been shy about my love for farro (or kale for that matter). Because farro is a sturdy grain and kale is a sturdy green, this holds up nicely for a few days in the fridge to enjoy as leftovers, perhaps packed in a mason jar (wink) as part of a brown bag lunch.
For some reason, I haven't made this black bean & turkey chili for ages. I decided it was just the thing to make Monday after the end of a long day of writing. It's the perfect sort of dish for when you are feeling brain tired and uninspired...it's simple, tasty, hard to mess up, and doesn't require too much chopping!
My interest in the chickpea flour, water and olive oil pancake known as socca peaked when we were planning our first-ever trip to the south of France. Socca is popular not just in southern France and Italy. The traditional—and best—way to cook it is in a wood-fired oven (mobile or otherwise), but you can easily make do with your home oven using a skillet or pizza pan.
I like dishes that are flavorful but simple, and that's what I had in mind when I devised this recipe for The Seattle Times. I'd been meaning to experiment with sorghum grain for quite a while, having read about it here and there, but when the offer of free samples came my way, I decided the time was now.
Today is the first-ever Alaska Wild Salmon Day. We are lucky here in Washington state to live so close to Alaska, home of well-managed wild salmon runs. If you don't have plans for dinner tonight, I suggest you swing by the store and pick some some gorgeous, omega-3-rich wild salmon for yourself!
Before I get to this delicious Potato-Purslane Salad recipe, I want to provide a little commentary on last week’s news that eating potatoes increased the risk of developing high blood pressure. Whenever I see a headline-grabbing nutrition story such as this one, I make sure I find and read the original research paper to see what’s what.
Ask me what my favorite whole grain is, and my unhesitating answer will be, "Farro!" Not that quinoa, barley, oats or rices of various incarnations (brown, black, red, green, wild) don't play a role in my kitchen, but farro is my true love, lending its appealing nutty chewiness to soups, pilafs, salads.
A tasty, nutritious, hearty salad in honor of World Pistachio Day. Make this salad as-is, or use it as a template to make it your own!
I have a confession: I’ve been a little lazy lately. Even though I prefer to brown bag my breakfast and lunch most workdays, I’d been relying a little too often on the little sandwich/salad/soup shop downstairs in my building. But sometimes convenience stops being convenient.
I'm fessing up: My 2015 Cookbook Challenge has kind of fizzled out. I think it was a worthy endeavor, for reasons I've previously discussed, namely that I revisited cookbooks that had been languishing on my shelves and cooked some wonderful dishes, but lately my foodie thoughts have been running to magazines, websites and new-to-me cookbooks from the library.
Every once in a while, I go on a bowl food kick, partly because it’s an easy way to assemble a healthy, tasty meal (and use up leftovers). What I love about bowls is that it's not about a recipe, it's about a template. I find that templates are much more user friendly, especially during those times when you're tired and busy but still want to prepare a healthy meal for yourself.
Happy Pumpkin Oatmeal Day! OK, technically it's National Oatmeal Day, but since National Pumpkin Day was on Monday, and I missed it (drat!), I decided to make this recipe for Baked Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal a two-fer. I started with my favorite baked steel-cut oatmeal recipe and tweaked it (why reinvent the wheel, I say). This is morning #2 of it, and I say it's delicioso!
Even though apples are in peak season in the fall, and are an emblem of back-to-school, pears are what really scream fall to me. When I think "pear" my next thought tends to be "walnuts." They are a natural pairing (pear-ing?), and add some blue cheese and you have a trifecta of deliciousness.
A delicious, hearty lentil and mushroom recipe that's perfect for Meatless Monday, adapted from one of the many fabulous recipes on the Canadian Lentils website. One of the best culinary discoveries I made last week at FNCE!
If there is any theme to emerge so far with my 2015 Cookbook Challenge, is
Now that my new stove is finally ready to be delivered (actually scheduling delivery is
As I threatened promised, my July cookbook picks provide plenty of opportunity to not cook.
I flew home early yesterday from a weekend camping trip (I had to work today,
Read more about this super-nutritious vegetable!
A few recipes from around the web that I'm craving:A tale of two egg saladsMoroccan
The term superfood gets thrown around with impunity sometimes, but salmon is one food that
My April Cookbook Challenge bled into May, largely because I’ve barely been home this month
My Cookbook Challenge proved to be a valuable tool for accountability this week when I
I know I'm supposed be cooking from this month's three anointed cookbooks (and I am),
Happy Tuesday! I had a nice feature-slash-column in Sunday's Seattle Times, "Yummy slow-cooker recipes promote
Happy Monday! I hope you had a chance to read my latest On Nutrition column
Here are a few recipes that have caught my eye lately:Chickpea, Feta and Parsley SaladChicken
I'm going to start teaching some cooking classes in the not-too-distant future (I have one
When I attend the Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo (FNCE) each year, I enjoy
This time of the year, as the weather grows cooler and the leaves start turning
I've been accumulating quite a digital "pile" of hearty-but-healthy recipes of late, so it feels
When the heat of summer starts to fade, my thoughts turn to cooking. I just
I sometimes take leftover soup to work in the cooler months, but never in the summer...until I was inspired by an interview with Penelope Cruz in InStyle to make gazpacho, a dish I've sort of avoided thus far in my life. I had a mountain of ripe tomatoes in my garden to use up, and I was getting tired of spending hours cooking them down into tomato sauce. I wanted something quick, easy and delicious!
Happy Monday! I haven't done a Meatless Monday post in a while, but I made this easy, tasty, meatless recipe last week, planned to share it with you anyway, and then thought, "Hey, why not share it on a Monday?"
It's that magical time of the summer when my vegetable garden is booming and I
This is the first summer in five years that I'm not juggling work and school.
Sometimes, I love cooking from a recipe, but other times...I just don't. Like, when I've been busy, or I'm tired, or I've broken my brain working on some project or other. Basically, when I'd rather operate on autopilot rather than think or read my way to a homecooked meal.
I have a horrible admission to make.Every single year for the last, oh, 15 or
When we take quick trips to San Francisco, a farmer's market is always on our itinerary (specifically, we beeline to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market), but taking home gobs of gorgeous produce is usually out of the question...except on this trip.
With warmer days at hand and my imminent return to working somewhere other than my
I've been on a cooking kick since we got home from Paris. I blame this
I knew the kale quinoa salad I made Tuesday for dinner was delicious, but I
I have shelves full of cookbooks and cabinets full of Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Food &
If you're the type of person who doesn't like to make a big hullabaloo about
With a stash of more than 200 cookbooks, at least that many back issues of
Following up on Sunday's On Nutrition column on diversifying your breakfast whole grain portfolio, here's
I'm a pretty good cook. I have more than 200 cookbooks, piles of back issues
I had planned to write a specific post for today, but decided it made more
Several months ago, I decided to investigate some of the quick-cooking grains available at Trader
Last weekend, while I had my nose to the grindstone on this project and that,
I know I've mentioned the Oldways website before, but it bears mentioning again. I love
Easiest (healthy) dinner ever:Cook enough pasta for two people (I used a hair over 3
Lentils are the best. They are nutritious, inexpensive and quick-cooking (compared to most other legumes).
I'm chastened to say that I would not have known that yesterday was Julia Child's
Some of the work I've been doing during my three-week community dietetics practice experience rotation
I've never officially observed Meatless Monday. And it's not because I'm so enamored with meat.
Since I try to eat seasonally as much as possible, there are certain foods and
I love a good pancake, and while there is something delightful about the traditional fluffy
I'm finally getting around to sharing one of the two great new recipes I made
Even though many of us cook and eat on the fly, at least some of
If I had to shop every week for everything I eat in that week, I
My "On Nutrition" column in yesterday's Seattle Times talked about the loss of fundamental cooking
I enjoy a lot of whole grains, but I get excited about farro. And I
A few quick things before I head off to watch my beloved Oregon Ducks play
If breakfast is the most important meal of the day, then New Year's Day breakfast
You know the whole "six degrees of separation" thing with actor Kevin Bacon (i.e., think
I heard that the medical journal The Lancet published a large series of reports on
I seriously don't know what I was thinking when I planned to cook a roast
Happy Labor Day! I hope most of you are having a nice three-day weekend (I
When at all possible, I like to begin my copious daily vegetable intake at breakfast.
You read that right. Amaranth isn't a grain. Like quinoa, it's a pseudograin. Or you
Well, Meatfest 2011 continues, this time with a primo-tasty recipe from Plenty. This was the
Last evening I staged my own little food revolution in my kitchen. A revolution of
...and I like bitter leafy greens, does that mean I'm bitter?Of the five primary tastes
I wasn't intending to continue writing about affordable nutrition this week, but the subject refuses
Do you know what is amazing about the inside of my refrigerator? You can see
I finally got Michael Pollen's Food Rules from the library! I own copies of The
I almost titled this post "The Return of Flavor," except that doesn't fit with my
OK, it's official. I don't like miso soup. The photo above is not of miso
Have I mentioned how much I love my weekly CSA boxes from Full Circle? Wednesday's
Short post today, since I had to take a two-hour microbiology test online last night.
Whew! After two days of "heavier" posts, I'm feeling like writing up something a little
I had a conference call yesterday from 7:30 to noon. This is not something that
Four things I'm super excited about right now:1. My weekly box from Full Circle. A
I was soooooo looking forward to a new episode of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution tonight,
I love leafy greens, the darker the better, but this wasn't always so. While I
Yes boys and girls, that's how many cookbooks I have. I finally counted them, out
I keep thinking about yesterday's post. I have a thread that continually runs through my
I was so bummed yesterday afternoon when I saw (via Twitter) that Jamie's Food Revolution
