My family is about as omnivorous as they come, but we eat vegetarian meals regularly and often dedicate whole weeks of our meal plans to eating meatless. Choosing vegetable-, grain-, and legume-based dinners helps us try new foods, eat more produce, and keep our grocery budget in check.
This week instead of sharing my personal meal plan, which is frankly eating up candy canes and leftover cheeses, I’ve rounded up our 10 most popular vegetarian meal plans from the last year.
Little kids love play kitchens, where they can pretend to be just like their parents — chopping, slicing, searing, and baking, with none of the yelling about how they’re about to burn themselves or poke an eye out. You’ve seen them — they’re usually clunky plastic in bright colors that just add to the visual disaster that having children turns your house into. But that wasn’t going to cut it for Reddit user mcsoup88.
New Year’s Eve is synonymous with hangovers. You go out with your friends, drink a little too much bubbly around midnight, wake up the next morning, and, well, you probably know what a hangover feels like. It’s not fun. So, what’s your hangover cure? Do you reach for a jug of water, some Advil, and a bagel? Or do you have another trick up your sleeve?
If you have kids in the house, there’s a good chance you know about Pedialyte, a drink that is normally associated with helping kids stay hydrated, especially when they’re sick. If you’ve been using the kids’ drink as your own personal hangover cure, you’re not alone, and now the company has FINALLY acknowledged that it’s an “adult” beverage, too.
I’m known in my friend group as the trendy one: I’ve mixed Mason jar cocktails while wearing dropped-crotch pants (and looked great in them, thank you), and I’ve made homemade apple cider donuts while sporting a Ray Charles-esque undercut hairstyle. But, as cool as I think I am, sometimes I completely miss a trend until it’s on its way out. That’s why, when I heard 2018 was the year of the chicken coop, I was taken aback — especially when I heard about the problem it’s causing for animal shelters across the country.
Did you learn how to cook anything new this year? Anna Hezel, senior editor at Taste (one of my favorite breakout food publications of the last couple years) asked this on Twitter last week and like a Muppet to the ABCs, I couldn’t resist jumping in. I’m glad I did. I always wish I had more time to cook all the things I want to cook (my To Cook list is still thousands deep), wish I could share more recipes more often here, but this caused me to look back at the new recipes here in 2018 and feel a murmur of pride. Look at all we did! I learned to make falafel, and that it’s shockingly easy! I got to make Pad Thai I crave the most at home. We got cacio e pepe just about foolproof at home, just when I was convinced I never would. I learned about melting potatoes. We made the sheet pan sandwiches of my dreams and they’re vegan too. We had a real talk about the InstantPot and got some delicious short ribs out of it. I learned to make the best apple pie I’ve ever had. I made a completely bonkers layered mocha cheesecake late in the day on my husband’s birthday, and last week we mashed up baklava and babka, just because we could. I look at all of this and I am so excited about the year we’ve had, many of these things I had barely dreamed up yet this time last year, and I hope next year is even better.
And now, a brief moment of sap: Getting to hang out here, indulging my culinary whims, and having a cheering and encouragement squad had been one of great surprises and delights of my so-called adult life. Who knew what I’d do when I grew up? Certainly not me. I bumbled along, I tried things I hated, I tried things I didn’t hate but felt no passion for, and one day I landed here and, to my surprise, am rarely asked to leave. I am so thankful you are here and since I am not tired of cooking, I hope you never get tired of reading.
So tell me: Did you learn how to cook anything new this year?
Meanwhile, here are your Smitten Kitchen favorites from this year:
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The best parts about spending the holidays with your family are the long evenings sipping cocoa, catching up on each other’s lives, and also getting to mess with the people you know best. Sure, the occasional prank on a friend is good for a few laughs, but playing a prank on your family means you know exactly how to really get to them — and you’re pretty much assured forgiveness. (Unless you cross the line. Don’t cross the line.)
This Christmas, Twitter user Judy Brown told the story of what might just be the best holiday prank of the year — or, rather, years, since it was not a single instance, but quite the long con.
We know what food trends to look out for in the fast-approaching new year, which will likely determine what you’ll be eating. But in 2019, where will you want to eat? Celebrity chef David Chang, host of the hit Netflix show Ugly Delicious, recently revealed his top three picks for the best food cities of 2019 — and one of them might surprise you.
Of all the joys associated with the Great British Bake Off — the lovable cast of bakers, the chemistry between new hosts Noel and Sandi — it’s the actual bakes that trump the rest.
Watching the bakers’ creations unfold is somehow both therapeutic and suspenseful. There’s only one downside: As beautiful as their baked goods might look, and while I completely trust Paul and Prue to be honest about the taste, I always end up wishing more than anything that I could try one of those beautiful cakes, and I mourn the loss of all the leftovers that must get wasted once the judging is over. Thanks to former contestant (and runner-up) Kim-Joy, we now know that all the baked goods that aren’t sampled by the judges do find a loving home.
In cooking there are few dishes that lend themselves to what cooks wistfully wish after, which is cooking without a recipe. The romantic cook in us all wishes to cook like a grandma or a trained chef — by sense and feel and grasping after a taste you know you can achieve through instinct alone.
But cooking like that doesn’t come out of thin air. You learn it like jazz, memorizing a pile of old standards to then riff and play and tinker in your own voice until making something old feels so new that it is yours.
Soup and stew are like this; learn a few formulas and you can soup on forever without cracking a book. But there are so many other dishes as well, and pasta casserole is perhaps my favorite of all.
We’re big believers in the fact that you can never have too many 30-minute meals in your kitchen arsenal. At the end of a long day at work or school, we often want delicious food fast — and that’s where these recipes come in. The thing they all have in common is that none of them take long to make, but they all still deliver on flavor. Basically, they’re the perfect thing to reach for when you don’t want to spend forever in the kitchen — but you still want to eat well. These 10 recipes are our most popular 30-minute meals from the year.