There’s a lot to love about pasta night. Slot it into your meal plan and you can be sure you’ve got a dinner lined up that’s seriously comforting, easy to pull off, and cheap. Those three qualities were also a constant theme in our most popular pasta recipes this year, which featured creamy orzo, a Tuscan tortellini skillet, one-pot primavera, and more.
Basic and budget recipes don’t have to mean boring — especially when it comes to dinner. I’ve been working on my own grocery budget as much to add cash to my vacation savings account as to reduce waste and keep a cleaner pantry — both pleasant side effects of buying only what you need!
Relying on staples that stock our pantry and freezer, we can save our budgets with those basics for delicious and filling dinners every cook should know.
If you’re a Costco regular, then there’s no doubt you’re well acquainted with just how often this massive store can come to the rescue when you’re getting ready to feed a crowd. While there are a ton of great buys, Costco really wins in the appetizer department. Meaning: The warehouse store can really be a life-safer this time of year when holiday parties are nonstop.
Whether you’re hosting or just tasked with bringing something, here are the best Costco appetizers to add to your cart, and the ones that are worth skipping.
Trader Joe’s has a bunch of incredible seasonal products they’ve released for the holidays, and one of them in particular caught my eye: Yule log ice cream. You guys, how ridiculously weird and delightful does that sound?!
“Bûche de Noël cake is a tradition that hearkens back to the ancient practice of burning a decorated Yule log (or, as the French say, Bûche de Noël) in celebration of the winter solstice,” Trader Joe’s begins in their Fearless Flyer, “The custom eventually morphed into baking ornate cakes decorated to resemble a Yule log, which is a pretty favorable progression of events, if you ask us.” (Agreed.)
If you love the DIY nut butter section that Whole Foods offers, you’re going to flip at this news. Cooking Light reports that Whole Foods is testing out a station in-store where shoppers can blend and fill bottles with fresh almond milk using some pretty spiffy-looking machines. Yes, you can now make your own almond milk!
As they’ve done in the past, throughout the month of December Target is featuring weekend-only sales in a variety of departments. So of course we’re especially excited that this weekend (that’s right — today and tomorrow only) they’re offering an additional 25 percent off kitchen appliances and cookware.
We sorted through hundreds of items to bring you our top four picks so you can take advantage of these generous savings. As a bonus, some are already on sale, making the prices that much more tempting.
Whether you celebrate the 12 days of Christmas, the eight nights of Hanukkah, or the one evening of Festivus, Whole Foods has a new event to add to your annual calendar: the 12 days of cheese. Yes, dairy-lovers, they have added a curd-nerd holiday to the winter that will light your refrigerator up with delicious deals on classic cheese, special holiday wedges, and exciting artisanal wheels.
When it comes to grocery stores, some chains rise above the rest, but few sow the kind of fervent enthusiasm as Trader Joe’s does. This week the radio show Freakonomics did their research-driven dive on just what it is about the “quirky little grocery chain,” as they say, that makes people love it so much.
For fans of celebrity chef Bobby Flay, the Food Network has been feeding them plenty of battles, burgers, and brunches for nearly 25 years — and it doesn’t look like the star will be slacking off anytime soon. Busy, busy Bobby is opening a new restaurant in Las Vegas called Shark, working on his 15th cookbook, and has just announced his newest television show — co-starring his daughter.
Shortly after my husband and I began dating — the dark ages; no seriously, his phone at the time looked like this and I was like whoa, look how fancy you are, dude — we went on a road trip somewhere, stopped at a gas station, and I told him to grab something candy-ish, surprise me. This boy came back to the car with a pack of Rolos, and honestly, it’s amazing we didn’t break up right then and there because Rolos are terrible candy and it’s about time someone said it. [Oh I can hear the reverberations of a thousand unfollows but I will absolutely die on this hill, and remain undeterred.] They’re gooey so they give off the appearance, the suggestion, of being good candy but the goo tastes like nothing. I feel this way about all caramel that appears inside candy bars, which tastes me more like thickened corn syrup than anything toasty and nuanced. Plus, they’re inside a milk chocolate shell, so it’s sweet against sweet, no contrast whatsoever, and so help you if you don’t eat them in a single bite, I hope you enjoy having sticky hands for the rest of the drive. I know, I know what you’re thinking: it’s an absolute mystery how I ended up with such a picky child.
In my unsolicited opinion, three things could improve Rolos: a real toasty, buttery caramel, the contrast of dark chocolate, and a bit of salt. As good caramel is gooey, we’re not going to fight it, but that’s what plates and forks are for.
