Shopping the holiday sales is a sure-fire way to save money on groceries. It’s also an opportunity to save money on “seasonal” items you use year-round. Some of these may be ingredients that just get marked down for the winter holidays — like baking supplies, holiday beverage supplies, and cold-weather foods at rock-bottom prices — and others may be items that are really hard to find any other time of year.
Many of you know Dana Velden from her long-running Weekend Meditation column here on the site. Dana started the column in 2008, and while she recently retired it to move on to other projects — notably, her new book, the calming, lyrical collection Finding Yourself in the Kitchen — we turn to her today for some much-needed holiday perspective.
I asked Dana to run us through the five most common emotions as we approach November’s biggest day. As always, she not only identifies the pain and pleasure points, but gives us real-world strategies to soothe and celebrate them.
Orange and earthy sweet potatoes are one of fall’s true gems. Baked, mashed, roasted, fried, or grilled, there’s no wrong way to eat them. The sweet potato can (and does) do it all — morning, noon, and night.
Here are 20 recipes that prove you can eat sweet potatoes for breakfast — hello, sweet potato pancakes — all the way through supper — gnocchi with greens and yams proves that point. And don’t forget dessert: Chai sweet potato cupcakes are calling!
The Kitchn’s teamed up with Tasting Table, Jetsetter, Saveur, Fine Cooking and Scoutmob to send someone on a food-lovers dream trip to Austin, Texas! CLICK HERE to enter for a chance to win! Trust us: you need this.
I’m not usually much of a dessert person, but for some reason, I’ll never turn down a slice of pumpkin pie. It’s probably because I love buttery crust and custard, and lucky for me, pumpkin pie has both. I decided to up the ante this year and throw an oatmeal streusel topping on top of the pie. You only have Thanksgiving dinner once a year, so why not?
We love it when caramel takes the lead in sweet treats, bringing that distinct, deep sugary flavor to everything from muffins to brownies. But don’t think that means we don’t love this stuff by the spoonful. Caramel candies plus a recipe for how to make your own means you’re just a drizzle away from sweet dreams.
Who: Tucker Pecan Company
What: Southern Pecans
Where: Montgomery, Alabama
Tucker Pecan Company scouts out the best Southeastern pecans to buy, and then shells them and sells them plain. But it also roasts and salts them, smothers them in chocolate, glazes them with honey, uses them to make crunchy coatings for candies, bakes them up in pies, and more.
While the downtown area of the Camellia State’s capital has undergone revitalization in recent years, drawing new business and new people to the heart of this historic city, Tucker Pecan Company has been in its spot on one edge of downtown for decades.
When The Kitchn told me they wanted to put together a week of dinners from and inspired by The Homemade Kitchen, I couldn’t wait to see what they would choose. It’s one of my favorite parts of the book process to see which recipes call to different people, and which techniques and flavors readers are drawn to try first. The dishes the editors chose are some of my favorites. This is a week of warm and nourishing comfort food, perfect for right now.
Cooking dried beans has this funny way of feeling like a complicated, daunting task, but once you find the method that works best for you, you’ll realize it’s mostly a hands-off affair. The main thing it requires from you is time — and exactly how much time varies from just an hour up to seven or eight hours, depending on which of these four cooking methods you use. They each have their merits and it’s important to know when to use which, so you can make beans in a way that fits your needs. Let’s take a look at these four techniques.
