There’s more to microwaving than piling food on a plate and pushing start. Microwaves are not just for reheating leftovers and boiling water; they can actually be a super-helpful (and healthy) tool for quick and efficient cooking — as long as they’re used properly.
One of the issues I had when living on the East Coast was that good Mexican food was harder to find. That meant that every trip home to San Francisco involved burritos, enchiladas, and piles of street tacos. Even now that I’m back out West, Mexican is still one of my favorite cuisines and something I can gladly eat for lunch almost every day!
I’ve been without a microwave for the majority of my adult life, but when we moved into our current apartment a couple years ago, there was already one installed into the kitchen. While I was a bit put-off by it (I’d been a proud, anti-microwaving human after all!), my now-fiancé was elated — because as far as he was concerned, he could finally reheat food the easy way again.
Definitely one of the best things about having a 6.5 year old is that he now has classmates that can bestow upon us The Annual Gift of the Thin Mint Cookies. If there were any other Girl Scout Cookies worth celebrating, I knew nothing about them until pickup earlier this week when I saw other parents scurrying off with boxes of curiosities like Samoas and Tagalongs and launched a full investigation. Seriously, why did nobody tell me about those crispy chewy rings of caramel, coconut and stripes of chocolate? Was there always a cookie with both peanut butter and chocolate in it or is this some millennium baby voodoo? Making up for time lost to Thin Mint blinders begins here and now.
The other awesome thing about elementary school kids is genuine excitement over math-y holidays such as this coming Monday’s Pi(e) Day, something that I previously only celebrated sarcastically, because I was a terrible person with a life bereft of wide-eyed wonder. Thus, when I spied a Tagalongs-style peanut butter pie on Tasting Table this week and realized that it was easy enough that I could pull it off in my current sleep-deprived fugue while also filing the vast peanut butter pie-shaped hole in the archives, it was a done deal.
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Smoothies are one of our favorite breakfast options year-round, but especially in the winter because it’s an easy way to brighten the mornings by adding extra fruit to our diets. And since frozen fruit works just as well (if not better — hello, icy, creamy texture), there’s no worry about whether it’s in season.
If you’re stuck in the doldrums of gray days, try these tropical smoothies. It won’t be quite like you’re relaxing on a white-sand beach, but it’ll be closer to it than your normal bowl of oatmeal.
My mom’s hand mixer has been around for as long as I can remember, and for as long as I can remember, I’ve called it Wally (I had a crush on the older Cleaver from Leave it to Beaver). Growing up, if Wally was on the kitchen counter, it meant Mom was preparing something delicious. And since Wally had two metal beaters, I was usually able to lick one if I played my cards right.
I can’t stand monotony when it comes to food. However, I could eat pasta every day for days at a time and never get bored. Not considering all the different ways it can be prepared, there are just so many different shapes — from long and flat to short and hollow. And then there’s gnocchi.
When I made plans to spend a week in Cuba, my gluten- and dairy-free diet was really the last thing on my mind. I was more worried about how many sundresses to pack, whether I would remember my newly learned salsa steps, and if immigration would stamp my passport (they didn’t). I’m pretty sure my travel companion, a vegan, didn’t think too much about what she would eat either. Spoiled by the food options in our respective cities (Brooklyn and Las Vegas), we naively assumed our meal choices were not something that we had to plan for or worry about.
I always try to have a bag of baby spinach in the fridge at all times. It’s versatile enough to throw into soups, sauté into a side dish, or toss in a morning smoothie since it’s so mild in flavor. My latest use for spinach? Stuffed into quesadillas, adding a much-needed dose of green vegetables to a normally cheese- and meat-heavy dish.
When you glance at your microwave and see that button that says “popcorn,” you may think that’s the one and only answer when cooking up a bag of the crowd-pleasing snack. I am here to tell you that it’s not.
