What a Dietitian Feeds Her Family During Ramadan — An American Ramadan

When I was growing up in Jordan, most things slowed down or were put on pause during Ramadan. The work days got shorter and activities around sunset were shifted to a different time or completely stopped. Restaurants closed during the day and opened at night. Traffic would jam 30 minutes before Iftar, as everyone was trying to make it home in time for the meal.

My family used to gather around the table and my mom always had the best Iftar spread: dates, juice, soup, appetizers, salad, main meal, and dessert. Breaking the fast was the highlight of the day.

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A Mom of 2 on What It’s Like Feeding Her Family in Japan — Real Mom Cooks

Aiko Tokunaga is a mom of two living in Tokyo, Japan. She’s spent a lot of time living in the United States, both for school and after, but has only cooked for kids in Japan. Her experience involves something many of us don’t think about on a daily basis: food safety.

Since the 2011 earthquake in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture, there have been concerns about radioactive contamination from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, so much of what Aiko does for her family involves finding great, safe foods.

We talked to Aiko about what her day-to-day life is like in Japan.

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ice cream cake roll

Wait, come back! No matter how charming Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood made them look on that early episode of Great British Bake Off, I know how most of us feel actually feel about making rolled cakes, which is that they’re the worst: pesky with separated eggs, fragile, cracking, prone to failure, causing foul language to leave the mouth of the person cooking. (“You owe me a quarter, mom.” “Not if you want cake.” is a conversation that might or might not happen around here on Passover.) But this one is different. With flour and cocoa inside, plus an additional egg, it’s stretchier and softer, and it doesn’t fight you so much when you want to roll, unroll it, and then reroll it. And you want to do all of these things because this is one of the prettiest ice cream cakes I’ve ever made, and much easier and faster than it looks.

getting startedstiff egg whitesbeat egg yolkssift dry ingredients over

This is one of those old-school recipes I’d seen bouncing around for years and studiously avoided due to an inherent and well-earned distrust of rolled cakes. But then it showed up in a new book this spring, The Vintage Baker*, there as a holiday-ready peppermint cake roll, and I couldn’t resist any longer. I love this story behind this book, which is that one day a decade ago, Jessie Sheehan, then a baker at the new Baked bakery in Red Hook, went into an antique/junk shop with her not-exactly-patient toddler in a stroller that didn’t exactly fit in the narrow aisles, something I can relate to just a little bit. She spotted boxes filled with brightly colored antique recipe pamphlets, the kind that were once distributed by brands as a thank you for purchases but really were just brilliant marketing devices, since all the recipes called for that brand’s goods, and in a haste to leave, scooped up as many as she could carry. She ended up going back for more and more, amassing quite a collection, and the resulting baking she did — with flavor and ingredient tweaks for modern tastes — is assembled in this book. Butterscotch pecan curls, pull-apart cinnamon raisin pull-apart flake bread, sand tarts, sour cream jumbles, and cornflake macaroons, I want to make everything in it. But I think I started in the right place.

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Mary Berry Shocks the World by Being Totally Wrong About Pies — Pop Culture

I can’t believe it, but Mary Berry — queen of British baking, author of more than 70 cookbooks — is utterly and completely wrong about pies.

On the last episode of Britain’s Best Home Cook, Mary Berry stunned the world and her fellow judges by asserting that pies should just have pastry lids and not be totally enclosed in pastry.

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What You Should Know Before Attending Your First Iftar — An American Ramadan

The Iftar, or the breaking of the fast, is one of the most significant points in the day during Ramadan, the ninth month in the Islamic calendar. Observing Muslims will abstain from all food and water — yes, even water — from the crack of dawn all the way until sunset, every day of this month. Since the Islamic calendar is a lunar one, each year Ramadan falls at a slightly different time. When Ramadan falls in the winter, the fast will be shorter; in the summer it can be quite long and intense.

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6 Things to Prep on Sunday for a Week of Easy Grilling — Tips from The Kitchn

The grill is one of the best tools you can have in your arsenal for quick weeknight dinners. It cooks food quickly and leaves you with no extra pans to clean after dinner (just a swipe of a clean cloth to clean the grates).

Here’s my secret to even easier weeknight grilling: I prepare a few things on the weekend (think: marinades for meats, sauces for vegetables) and then come home ready to grill any night of the week. Here are six things to prep on the weekend for weeknight grilling.

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3 of Our Favorite Ice Cream Makers Are on Sale — Just in Time for Memorial Day — Amazon Deal of the Day

Who are we kidding? Ice cream is a year-round treat. It’s just that it tastes even better during the summer — especially when it’s homemade!

Whether you have a hand-me-down machine that could stand to be replaced or you’re new to the churn-your-own process, we’ve got some good news: Three of our favorite ice cream makers happen to be on sale right now.

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Joanna Gaines Shares Her Favorite Meal Prep Dinner — Pop Culture

You might assume that celebrities have meals prepared for them by personal chefs, or don’t go to the grocery store like us plebeians, but that’s not the case for the Gaines family. Former Fixer Upper star Joanna Gaines recently told Kitchn that she loves shopping at H-E-B in Texas. “You just have a ton of options,” she said about the store.

Gaines has also been very vocal about how much she loves meal prep for feeding her family (when she has time). She even went so far as to create a little print-out meal prep planner for people on her blog. So when we sat down with Gaines a couple of weeks ago, we asked her what her favorite meal prep dinner to make for her family is right now.

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