Monthly Archives: June 2014
This Week My CSA Box Has Greens, More Greens, Parsley and a Quart of Strawberries — Keeping Up With My CSA Box: Week 1
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Welcome, friends! I’m here to share with you my CSA adventure this season. As most of you know it was an incredibly long winter for the East Coast. I might actually have weather-induced PTSD from it. (Did I mention I was indoors for four months with my toddler while pregnant with my second son?) So when I learned of a new CSA program available to our town, I jumped with exuberance to participate! What could better cure the winter blues than fresh, organically-grown produce for five months straight?
Here’s a look at my first week’s box
Recipe: Green Goddess Quinoa Salad Bowl — Healthy Lunch Recipes from The Kitchn
Homemade green goddess dressing with farm fresh herbs, fresh lemon juice and avocado will have you feeling like a goddess in no time.
A DIY Wedding Reception for 200: The Party Plan — Gatherings from The Kitchn
This month we’re going to bring you a slightly different Gathering from The Kitchn (see our whole party series here!). Usually we show you a party we’ve thrown in our own homes, like a baby shower or a game night with friends. This week, however, I’m going to show you how I catered a friend’s wedding reception last month.
It was a big job — appetizers and drinks for 200 people! But this is still a very reasonable thing to do as an amateur cook, with a few notes, caveats, and precautions. I’ll share those this week, along with some favorite recipes. Here are the basic details of what I took on.
valerie’s french chocolate cake
My friend Valerie makes one chocolate cake. No, I don’t mean one chocolate cake for school birthday cupcakes and one for grown-up dinner parties, one for wedding cakes and one for really decadent layer cakes, one for roulades and one for a Thursday afternoon, just because. I mean just one recipe. She serves it plain to guests after dinner, she makes it when she hears it’s your birthday and she stacks, and coats it hypercolored frosting and studs it with superheroes for her kids’ birthdays.
It’s incredibly simple, just butter (she’s French, so bien sûr), dark chocolate, sugar, flour, a bit of baking powder and her secret ingredient: water. A spoonful or two here and another there creates a decadent crumb you won’t read about in any cookbook. Sure, you could use milk or maybe replace a spoonful with some kirsch but she does not so I do not. The whole thing, save some hand-whisked egg yolks and machine-whipped egg whites (which gives it an airy lift and almost crackly meringue of a lid), is mixed in the pot where you melt the chocolate. It bakes in 30 minutes, which is convenient when your afternoon is rerouted, and tastes amazing. And I bet she regrets ever giving me the recipe.
… Read the rest of valerie’s french chocolate cake on smittenkitchen.com
© smitten kitchen 2006-2012. |
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Enter Now To Win! The Summer Entertaining iPad Sweepstakes — From The Kitchn and PureWow
Prize: A summer entertaining package including an iPad mini, iTunes gift card, Cuisinart ice cream maker, and other accessories for summer parties!
From: The Kitchn and PureWow
Value: $592
It’s finally summer, and you know what that means: it’s time to sweep the patio, wipe down the picnic table, and throw a party! In celebration of summer soireés and backyard get-togethers, we’ve teamed up with our friends at PureWow to give one lucky winner an amazing all-out summer entertaining package, including an iPad mini (to help you find your favorite recipes, of course!), a Cuisinart ice cream maker, a gift card so you can pick up some new tunes, and much more.
Want a chance to win? Click through to check out the full prize package and enter below:
Low-Fat Recipes: Bean Soup With Kale
4.66 / 5 Stars | 548 Reviews
by USA WEEKEND columnist Jean Carper
“White beans, cannellini or navy, and chicken broth form the base of this soup made with fresh kale and tomatoes.”
Low-Fat Recipes: Bean Soup With Kale
Low-Calorie Recipes: Brussels Sprouts with Mushrooms
Remembering to Taste — Weekend Meditation
Eating is such a full-on sensory experience: taste, yes, but also smell and mouth-feel (texture) and even sound (the crunch of an apple, the slurp of soup). And we all know the saying that we taste first with our eyes. But how much do we remember to actually taste what we’re eating? Are we still tasting after our third or fourth bite?