The sun is shinning down on you this month, dear star babies. It’s time to slip on those sandals, try on a new dress, and get recipe planning. I’ve done my research and found out exactly what you should be eating in June.
Is it just me or does the warmer weather just absolutely dampen your motivation to cook at home too? It feels like the weather went from breezy to balmy really quickly, and my dinner mojo went away right with it.
So here’s the plan for this week to keep me cooking — no heating up the oven, no grilling, and making as many no-cook recipes as possible. Call it lazy if you want to, but I’m calling it my warm-weather meal planning strategy.
Whether or not you know there will be vegetarians at your next potluck, it’s never a bad idea to bring something meatless just in case. Plus, more veggies will only add to the abundance of the spread.
These dishes ditch the meat in place of colorful vegetables and can be both a satisfying main for vegetarians or a side for those who eat meat. Either way, everyone will win.
How much do you think about your gut? You know, your digestive system — and, more importantly, the trillions of probiotic bacteria and other organisms that live inside it?
Well perhaps we all should spend a little more time focusing on those little guys. Nurturing a well-maintained microbiome can strengthen immunity, aid digestion, improve nutrient absorption, and even boost mental health.
Probiotics — and the foods and lifestyle that contribute to a healthy microbiome— are the entire focus of the June issue of Cooking Light. It’s a special issue completely devoted to “gut health,” and if you only pick up one food magazine this month, this should be the one.
Remember last month when Victoria Beckham celebrated her birthday by slicing into a hexagon of watermelon with a candle in it? And remember when everyone was like “STOP IT, THAT IS NOT A CAKE, THAT IS A STACK OF FRUIT,” and wondered if someone should start showing her flashcards so she could learn the difference before her 45th next year?
Well, I have just discovered a new fruit-centric tragedy, and it is even more unsettling than Posh Spice’s not-a-cake-a-melon.
While one whiff of sour cow’s milk is all you need to know it’s gone bad, it can be a little harder to read the signals for almond milk. It of course spoils just like other kinds of dairy and non-dairy milk, but how can you tell? These are the things to look for to know if it’s time to toss it.
For most of the last decade or two, my dad was on a perennial low-carb diet, eschewing bread and often sugar, save for carefully chosen exceptions. When family would come over for dinner, he’d always tell me I didn’t need to make anything special for him, but I enjoyed the challenge of coming up with a menu that would work for everyone. The results became some of my favorite meals to this day. Previously, dinner parties usually had a carb-assault at the center — lasagna or spaghetti and meatballs or mussels and fries — but in these, protein (and a great heap of vegetables) get the spotlight: chicken gyro salad, street cart chicken (one of my favorites in Smitten Kitchen Every Day), piri piri chicken, and many steak salads. As should be clear, these aren’t bread- or carb-free, but they’re set up in an assemble-your-own style that allows the carb-rejecting to eat as they wish, and the carb-demanding (or not) children to get into the meal too. Everybody wins.
This is one of the more recent ones. I jokingly called it the Not-Really-Thai Steak Salad because I was craving a flavor profile, not authenticity. [While it’s probably closest to yum neua yang (grilled beef salad), it wouldn’t include noodles or greens beans, just for starters; neua naam tok (waterfall beef) would have even fewer extras, and is often served with rice.] The first time I made it, while it was delicious, I completely overdid it with fixings: chile-lime peanuts, crispy fried shallots, julienned mango, sheesh, almost full-sized salad bar of options. I was craving it again last Friday (when this handsome couple came over) but vowed to keep it simpler, trying to distill it to its most essential parts — it’s the garlic, lime, and fish sauce marinade that I crave most — and landed on this, and it was so good, it’s officially in the summer rotation now.
Almost every kitchen has one and almost every home cook loves to complain about it: We’re talking about the oh-so-impractical corner cabinet. For the most part, the corner cabinet tends to be a black hole, where small appliances and gadgets go to live out the rest of their lives — untouched. Or, it’s just a totally empty waste of space because you know that the stuff that goes in there is impossible to get out.
We’ve written about some smart ways to make the most of kitchen corners (see: 3 Smart Ways to Make the Most of Kitchen Corners), and the topic got a lot of people talking on Reddit the other day. Users started posting videos to highlight their brilliant corner cabinet setups and, holy lazy Susan, were these setups impressive!
Keep reading to check them out.
Everyone knows that the best place to eat in the Hamptons would be at Ina Garten’s house, where we could look through her pantry for things like locally raised honey. But if you’re still waiting for your invitation to one of her famous parties — I assume the post office lost mine somewhere, like my Hogwarts letter — the next best thing to do is to shop at Ina’s favorite places.
Luckily Ina has done us all a huge favor and written up a list of some of her favorite places to shop and eat in the Hamptons.
About five years ago my husband and I bought an old, decrepit house, and renovated it top to bottom. (My whole renovation story is here, if you want to see!) Part of that renovation included adding on an open kitchen that we outfitted with a semi-custom IKEA kitchen.
I loved designing my kitchen from scratch, and we saved a ton of money by doing most of the design and work ourselves. But let me tell you — when you go the DIY route, you do run the risk of missing details that can make a big difference. Here’s the biggest (yet surprising) mistake we made.