Mexican food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, please. I’ll start with huevos rancheros or chilaquiles and then move on to tacos, tacos, tacos. Take a super simple grilled chicken and top it with tangy tomatillo salsa and some pickled red onions, and you’re elevating it a completely different beast. Sure, filling your tortilla with crispy-edged carnitas or a…
Weeknight Dinners: January 30-February 3, 2017
Happy Chinese New Year! To celebrate, we’re starting Monday off with tofu egg roll bowls full of Chinese cabbage, bok choy, red peppers and carrots. Longevity noodles, veggie lo mein or sesame noodles sound tempting, but after a few days at Cal-a-Vie Spa in San Diego I’m planning to stay focused on lean protein and plenty of greens and vegetables. I’m banishing pasta, bread and processed carbs for…
Super Fast Miso Soup
Miso soup: A warm, steamy bowl of liquid umami. I sometimes struggle with what to serve for “meatless Monday,” but this one is a surefire hit with my crew. It also checks the box on almost all special diets: It’s low-fat, low-carb, low-sugar and vegan if you buy a variety of miso paste without bonito (fish…
Weeknight Dinners: January 23-27, 2017
This is going out pretty darn late. I’m surrounded by Tamiflu, Mucinex and cough drop wrappers as I try to get my oldest well and keep everyone else healthy. Hold, please, while I douse my house with Lysol. I haven’t done my typical Monday morning grocery run, but since our pantry is stocked with good-quality…
Tomatillo Salsa
This one’s for the weekend. It’s fast enough to whip up on a Tuesday, but screams for salty tortilla chips and a cold beer on Friday night. Tomatillo salsa is one of those staples we tend to have stocked in the fridge around here, and it gets spooned onto scrambled eggs, quesadillas or tacos just about every day. Roasting the tomatillos helps…
Weeknight Lasagna
For birthday celebrations and back-to-school dinners, this is our go-to family meal. It’s a creamy, rich lasagna without much effort or mess. That’s why we call it “weeknight lasagna.” You can make it even faster (and meatless) by eliminating the sausage. Then just pop open a jar of store-bought tomato sauce, open a box of…
Weeknight Dinners: January 16-20, 2017
We’re in slow-mo over here, soaking up the three-day weekend, recipe testing and watching way too much Netflix and football. With three kiddos home from school Monday, I’m punting my weekly grocery run to Tuesday. That’s fine, the beauty of the vegetarian three-bean chili (I promise to post the recipe soon) is that the ingredients are already in my pantry and fridge. All you need are…
Whole Chicken in the Crock Pot
The slow cooker is a revelation. There may be nay sayers (you know who you are) but there are some days that just scream for plug-it-in-and-forget-about-it in my house. It’s a no-brainer dinner when you’re running in a million different directions and know you’ll be energy depleted at the end of the day, or when you’re trying to feed several different…
Weeknight Dinners: January 9-13, 2017
We’ve hit the ground running this month, and we’re heading into another busy week around here. I’m sticking with some of our tried-and-true favorites. The miso salmon is from Martha Rose Shulman — it calls for marinating the fish for 2-3 hours, but if you can’t pull that off, no sweat! Just marinate it for 15-30 minutes…
Grilled Tri Tip with Chinese Black Bean Sauce
I’m not exaggerating when I say my husband begged me not to share this tri tip recipe. It’s a secret weapon we pull out for dinner parties and barbecues that not only takes 5 minutes to put together, it turns out surprisingly delicious. Lucky for you, I didn’t listen. I couldn’t help myself. It’s just too…