Garlic Confit Is the Magic Secret to Loving Any Vegetable — The Vegetable Butcher
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Garlic confit is my secret ingredient, my special sauce, one of my all-time favorite tricks to give any vegetable a makeover. It’s a play on an old technique (preserving meat in its own fat) and a venerable French dish (duck confit). You can use the same fancy term to cook and preserve garlic in essentially the same way. Except, here, olive oil is the fat of choice. The technique produces meltingly tender and sweet cloves, along with a by-product of fragrant and delicious oil. It’s magic.
The Midnight Scoop Is the Ferrari of Ice Cream Scoopers — Product Review
Product: Midnight Scoop
Price: $50
First Look: This is an ergonomic, heavy-duty ice cream scoop that’s built to dig through hard ice cream and last for a lifetime.
I’m serious about my ice cream. However, there was a period of time in my early 20s when I was a lazy ice cream scooper. I would pull the container from the freezer and use my spoon as a spear to carve out pieces of hard ice cream. Not surprisingly, this resulted in a lot of bent spoons.
I eventually moved on to ice cream scoopers, and most recently was thrilled to take the Midnight Scoop, which is like the Ferrari of ice cream scoopers, for a test ride.
Why Summer Squash Was the Devil but Now It’s Amazeballs — Strong Opinions
Growing up, I wasn’t the child that minded eating her veggies, but when it came to one in particular, I could sense its evil, slimy presence lurking — waiting to induce horrible gagging noises, a stuck-out tongue, and a ridiculous amount of whining. Summer squash and zuchini, I’m looking at you!
Healthy Appetizers: Spicy Lentil Dip
4 / 5 Stars | 34 Reviews
by Noni
“You boil lentils, then blend them until smooth to make this pungent puree; curry-scented spices–like cumin, garlic and cayenne–finish the dish.”
Healthy Side Dishes: Easy Curried Cauliflower
Healthy Main Dishes: Quick Lemon Dijon Chicken
Want to Keep Your Fridge Organized? Buy One with a Glass Door — Kitchen Inspiration
No matter how many times I clean it out and organize it, my fridge is always a mess. I have a tendency to shove things to the back of the fridge, where I forget about them for weeks, until it’s time to clean things out again.
And don’t get me started on how many random condiments are stashed in the door — it’s borderline embarrassing. If I owned my apartment, one solution I’d be considering is replacing the refrigerator with one that has a glass door. If the mess is on display, I’m much more likely to keep it tidy.
chocolate chunk granola bars
As I shuffle towards the finish line of this family-expansion project we began so long ago that it’s become a running joke* there are days when I honestly do not understand why human beings need to gestate beyond 37 weeks. I mean, pretty much the minute the doctor estimated this kid to be 6 pounds, I concluded “it’s cooked! It can come out now, right?” and imagined our 4th of July, baby snuggled in wrap, beer in one hand, medium-rare burger in the other and, lo, it sounded pretty grand to me. Because, of course, we know from experience that’s exactly what the first weeks of having a newborn look like. Fortunately, there are other days when I wake up and feel almost like a person who does not have feet in her rib cage, when by some miracle, I’m able to swim a mile, find some forgotten dress in my closet that actually fits with dignity, and cook things we can pass off as dinners, present and future, and this is one of those days so let’s frolic in it.
In a few days, my son starts a day camp in which the kids are supposed to bring their own lunches — no, not even summer brings a reprieve from my favorite activity — and snacks. Snacks! Predictably, this has stressed me out because I neither want him to feel unloved for being the only kid without a package of some sort of candy/gummy/cookie monstrosity or some other unwholesome delight nor do I want him to develop a package-of-monstrosity-a-day habit. Ideally, I’d rather him eat something homemade where the ingredient list didn’t sound like a science project. Realistically, my best-laid plans will probably only take us through the first couple weeks, after which we’ll be too busy not to succumb to all the wonders of the packaged food world, but until then, I plan to give myself an A for effort. This is also a nut-free facility, a couple of his friends are gluten-free, another cannot have dairy, and all of these factors have collided to finally motivate me to update my go-to granola bars accordingly.
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Recipe: Heidi Swanson’s Summer Squash Soup with Coconut Milk — Recipes from The Kitchn
I think most of us know (and love) Heidi Swanson’s website, 101 Cookbooks. It has certainly been one of my favorite food reads for many years, and I am always inspired by the way Heidi brings vegetables to the fore, often in unexpected ways. So when we were hunting for some fresh ways to feature zucchini and squash this week, Heidi’s books were one of the first places I looked.
This soup is one of the rare soups that sounds appealing in the summertime — a spicy, tangy blend of Thai red curry paste, coconut milk, tofu, and squash. It’ll make you sweat — in a good way.