(Image credit: Joe Lingeman)
What’s not to love about trail mix? It’s equal parts sweet, savory, crunchy, and chewy — a perfect snack no matter what you’re craving. Throwing all these elements into a soft oatmeal cookie yields a one-handed treat that’s easier to eat than trail mix, yet still offers that same satisfying mix of dried fruit, toasty nuts, sweet chocolate, and yes, even salty bits of crunchy pretzel. Let’s just call these little guys trailblazers (pun intended), shall we?
In the summertime, “salad night” is a regular part of my dinner rotation. Some weeks I’ll even do salad night twice. It’s the simplest, most delicious way to clean out the crisper at the end of the week, a fun way to use up my farmers market haul, and, when it’s hot and I’m tired, it makes dinner super easy. From all-veggie salads to more substantial salads topped with meat or (ahem) beefed up with beans and hearty grains, here are 20 delicious salads to add to your summer meal plan.
In my quest to stick to a food budget, I’ve found that lunch is my downfall. I have some inexpensive breakfast ideas that get me out of bed in the morning (homemade muffins! Eggs!) and dinner is a place I’m now in the groove with for meal planning, but for some reason it’s hard for me to break the habit of going out to lunch when I’m at the office. Those fancy New York lunch salads add up, and I know I need to make a change if I want to really stick to a budget.
That’s why I was so excited today when our friends at Cup of Jo posted an ingenious idea for a $2 lunch. If that wasn’t already exciting enough, it just so happens that the base of the lunch comes from Trader Joe’s.
(Image credit: Christine Han)
Date bars have turned my daily dessert world upside down. You see, up until a few weeks ago I had never even heard about date bars, but after the first batch I knew I had found my new favorite, go-to cookie bar. These bars are made with only four major ingredients — dates, oats, butter, and a bit of brown sugar — and come together in about the time it takes the oven to preheat. They happen to be naturally gluten-free and low in added sugar, which means they’re the kind of treat that makes a near-perfect after-school snack (but something that pairs deliciously with a bourbon night cap too).
That’s not even the best part, though! Biting into these bars is the most delicious adventure in contrasting textures. The top is crisp and buttery with oat crumble, while the date filling is sweet as caramel and just as lush. The same oat mixture that crisps on top becomes chewy and nutty on the bottom of the pan. Personally, I call dibs on the corner pieces, but here’s how to make a whole pan of these delicious old-fashioned date bars.
Whether you use a standard Weber kettle grill at home or plan to use the public grills at a park or campsite, charcoal grills do require some cleaning and regular maintenance to make sure they function well and cook your food properly. Here’s how to do it!
(Image credit: Lucy Sparrow)
New York City has no shortage of bodegas, also known as corner delis. The Big Apple is reportedly home to 12,000 bodegas, although their numbers are dwindling due to rising rent and the growth in chain franchises. Now a new one has popped up at the Standard High Line in New York’s trendy meatpacking district and it’s a little different from the rest: it’s made entirely of felt.
I used to spent hours poring over vacation rental listings on sites like Airbnb and VRBO looking for places that were comfortable and kid-friendly for my family of four. It’s completely possible, as long as you know what to look for, but it’s also time-consuming.
Then I discovered Kid & Coe, a website dedicated to family-friendly vacation rentals around the world.
(Image credit: Joe Lingeman)
Stir-fries are in my regular dinner rotation because they’re fast and I can cook veggies and proteins together all in one pan. One day I spotted the bag of frozen Asian dumplings that I always stock for quick lunches and an idea percolated in my head: What about using dumplings instead of meat or tofu in a stir-fry instead? And then a one-pan meal was born. Crunchy on the outside, juicy on the inside, pan-fried dumplings are tossed with crisp-tender veggies and a savory, vinegary sauce that coats everything to glossy perfection. No need to make rice or noodles to go with this stir-fry — with the dumpling wrappers, there’s already a starch included!
Before I had a baby, my freezer was like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It seemed impenetrable, things had been there forever, and whoever was brave enough to wade through it would receive handsome rewards.
There were bottles of expensive vodka, the juice of lemons I had brought home from Capri, and batches of peach ice cream I made in the summer. There was the top tier of wedding cake for a year after my wedding. (Once my husband noticed it back there, he legitimately asked me if there was a human head in the freezer. I should have said yes).
These days, my freezer is less of an exciting addition to my fridge and more of a lifeline. On nights when the day was overwhelming, my baby is fussy, or I just don’t feel like cooking or making a mess in the kitchen, that freezer is a necessity. Here are items I always have in my freezer.
(Image credit: Joe Lingeman)
This spicy, smoky bean salad packs a whole lot more flavor into it than you’d expect of something that takes all of six minutes to make, and you have hot smoked salmon to thank for that. Its deep flavor gives a can of black beans a serious boost of flavor, so this lunch doesn’t need too much else by way of seasoning. Add some cherry tomatoes and avocado in there for color and toss it all with a cumin-lime dressing, and the result is a lunch I guarantee you’ll be putting on repeat. Pile the whole mess on rice, scoop it up with chips, or just eat it straight from the bowl.
