Hello, Hemp Seeds! 5 Great Recipes to Get You Started

Getting to Know Hemp Seeds: 5 Starter RecipesHemp seeds are on my permanent grocery list these days. But when my mom came to visit from California a few weeks ago, she turned her nose up at them and couldn’t quite understand: Why not just eat granola in the morning instead? Why would you put those in your salad? The truth? They’re nutty and delicious and pack a serious nutritional punch. In short: I’ve fallen hard for them. 

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espresso granita with whipped cream

granita di caffe con panna

One of my favorite desserts on this planet (yes, we’re going for High Melodrama today, also, it’s that wonderful) is affogato, which translates from Italian as “drowned.” The lucky drowner is top-notch vanilla gelato, and it is draped in a single shot of freshly-pulled espresso. I see you arching your eyebrows and you are full of questions, aren’t you? Isn’t that horribly bitter? Doesn’t it melt the ice cream? How can it be your favorite dessert if it has neither butter nor chocolate with it? All are legitimate concerns but the thing is, when it’s done right — and there really is a magical balancing point between the volume of ice cream and the amount of espresso, that is, sadly, rarely achieved — the resulting mess is a semi-slumped mound of cold and sweet vanilla cream with a trench of faintly bitter latte around it. It is the ultimate grownup dessert — sure, you get the ice cream you’ve been angling for after dinner since you were 3.5, but you also get a bracing hit of espresso, just enough to keep you up past your bedtime, you know, when all the fun begins.

espresso granita, unsweetened cream

Of course, we’re not going to talk about affogato today because, well, now you already know how to make it now. Instead, we’re going to talk about the cups of granita di espresso con panna we fell head over heels for in Rome, which reminded me of an inversed affogato. Instead of unsweetened espresso coating sweetened creamy gelato, it’s the coffee that’s icy and sweet and the cream that’s plain and soft. The result is the same contrast of bitter versus sweet, soft versus icy that I love in affogato, but stacked in a cup that you can eat with a spoon as you wander the ancient cobblestoned center of Rome on blazing hot day when even the dapper businessman we passed along the Tiber was licking a gelato cone with the utter abandon of a kid. (Rome, you are wonderful.)

looking upkeeping the kid out too laterush hour in romefrom villa borghese to piazza navonasweet balloons and an e-reader at the vaticanthis is a pizza flour delivery little wanderertonnarelli cacio e pepe

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USDA Approves Non-GMO Label for Meat

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Finding June Before It’s Too Late — Weekend Meditation

Finding June Before It's Too Late

Green was the silence, wet was the light,

the month of June trembled like a butterfly. 

~Pablo Neruda

Did you notice that it’s almost over, this first month of the summer? It’s not too late, but you must act quickly!  Head outside because June is something best felt on the skin: the sun, the warm afternoon breezes, the lake water that’s still almost too cold. It’s the height of the solstice and the evening light is like a good friend lingering long at your dinner table, welcomed and fascinating. Lean into it and soak in all you can.  Ask your most secret questions and be ready for whatever it offers in return.

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