I live in what is, by all reasonable standards, a very small apartment. I say this not to complain — I like my apartment! — but only to suggest that I am not necessarily in a position to devote an entire cabinet to an ice cream maker that I have never used.
But there it sits, a full-sized ice cream maker, in a cabinet above my three-quarter sized fridge, where it has rested, untouched by milk or sugar, for approximately six years.
These veggie-heavy burrito bowls are tucked in my meal plan rotation and saved for the nights when I want to feel like a real dinner superhero. With a base of cilantro-lime cauliflower rice, smoky black beans and corn, a touch of salsa, creamy avocado, and seared chicken breast, this is wholesome indulgence at its finest. And thanks to pantry and freezer staples, and a smart shortcut, they come together effortlessly.
I love playing hostess any night of the week, but my favorite party to throw is, hands-down, a game night. An entertaining and relaxing way to spend time with friends and family, game nights are the perfect opportunity to get together, unwind, and have fun without the pressures of a formal dinner or cocktail party.
Related: A Friday Board Game Night with Friends, Dinner, Snacks & Sangria
All you really need for a successful game night? Games, yes. And some friends. The last thing? Drinks! You can do some simple beers or wine — or you can try to pair a signature cocktail with the night.
Whether it has a vague nod to the game, or it’ll just help keep players on track, here are some suggested pairings for whatever board you’re unboxing.
The week after a holiday is always a little bit nutty. Our routine is off, skewed by hosting family and trying to eat up leftover ham rather than do a real meal plan. Meal planning is like a friendly reset button at the end of the week.
But this week I’m fighting fatigue and instead of trying to be creative in my meal plan, I’m relying on my meal planning template.
The world is changing. This isn’t just an understatement about politics. It’s a truism about the equinox, that sliver of time when one season becomes another, when we exhale the old life and breathe in the new. Some of us free our houses from every last crumb for Passover. Some fill it with Peeps for Easter. Plenty use spring to make a fresh start, and for others still it’s a whole new (Persian) year. I am cleaning the winter out of my freezer. I have bones to pick.
Let’s take a moment to truly appreciate the awesomeness of eggs. What other food can be cooked in so many ways, yet also be a foundational ingredient in baked goods, custards, and sauces? Eggs hold a rightful place as a refrigerator staple because they’re economical, have a long shelf life, and have been the savior of last-minute meals when you don’t have much else around to cook.
We love all those things about eggs — and we’re in good company — but for these recipes, we wanted to treat this workhorse ingredient to a little luxury. So while these recipes are still great for quick dinners and family brunches, they feature eggs in all their melting, yolky, showstopping glory. From an ingenious vegetarian take on Scotch eggs (they’re wrapped in falafel!) to the crispiest, cheesiest, Frenchiest croque madame, here are five stunning ways to make eggs the main attraction.
(Image credit: journy)
Now that I’ve gotten a few bigger projects out of the way — hooray! And more soon on all of that, eee — I have a little more time again to do the things I like: read books with pages, fuss endlessly over our charges, get excited about summer events (I might make another wedding cake!), this year’s container gardening attempts, what color lipstick Refinery29 says was all the rage at Coachella this year (if I’m being completely honest) and more relevantly, cooking. Brainstorming earlier this week, Sara, who helps (I mean, she tries, she has only so many superpowers) keep me organized, said she’d had a really good pistachio cake at a coffee shop recently and I immediately wanted to try my hand at my own.
In my mind, the perfect pistachio cake would be absolutely green (my favorite color) with pistachio intensity, ideally with even more pistachios than flour but require no pistachio paste (not available everywhere and certainly not at, say, Sicilian quality), multiple bowls, or finicky steps. Usually, I start with recipes I’ve made before, trying to extract what I liked about them and apply them to something new, but I didn’t have a preferred template yet for a good, very nutty pound cake yet so I started pulling down books until I found ones that sounded promising. I landed on two, in fact, one from Yossy Arefi’s Sweeter Off The Vine and one from Rose Carrarini of Rose Bakery’s Breakfast, Lunch, Tea. They were so different, I had to make both. The first one was tender, moist, and honestly perfect, although I immediately wanted to swap out some flour with more pistachios to fulfill my dark green cake hopes and dreams. The second, which indeed had way more pistachios than flour, ended up so buttery, I am not even exaggerating when I say I could have wrung it out. I didn’t know where to go from there so I did something weird: I made some tweaks and averaged the recipes together. Like, grade school math. They teach this technique in cooking school, right?
Don’t drink? You still might want to get yourself a bar cart. The little guys can offer tons of storage solutions for spaces all around the house. You just have to get a little creative — or steal one of these clever ideas.
As much as it pains me to say this, you actually do not need one of those adorable egg holders. I know, they look cute in the fridge or sitting out on your counter as you whip up baked goods, but they’re unnecessary and you already have the perfect thing to hold your eggs.