Going Green Begins at the Kitchen Table

Tapas for Toddlers

Thanksgiving Countdown: Appetizer, Cranberries, Sides & Dessert
Hopefully you’ve already ordered your local, free-range, and/or Heritage-breed turkey, but now what? cranberry baked brie My strategy for cooking Thanksgiving dinner with a toddler underfoot is to prepare one simple but impressive appetizer. My favorite

Pear Ricotta Sausage Pizza (and Curious Chef product review)
I’ve written a lot about apples this fall, but I’d be remiss not to mention that other star of late autumn fruit stands: the pear. From crisp Asian pears, perfect for salads, to sweet Bartlett pears, poached for dessert, and the boy’s favorite, toddler-hand-sized

Meatless Monday Meal Planning
The nice thing about Meatless Monday falling on a Monday is that it’s good incentive to eat something lighter after the heavy foods typically eaten on a weekend. Particularly a weekend such as ours, with two toddler birthday parties = pizza for lunch and dinner and way too much birthday cake. In the summer I often have a smoothie for lunch on Mondays just to detox from all the carbs I seem to stockpile on the weekends. And if the weekend was too busy for shopping, well, what better excuse to raid the pantry and clear out some pasta or grains, canned beans, and any of last week’s vegetables still languishing in the crisper. It also helps to have a ready list of fall-bac

Countdown to Thanksgiving: Order Your Local Turkey Today!
@ South Mountain Creamery If you’re hosting Thanksgiving dinner this year, it’s time to pre-order your local turkey! If you read a lot of food magazines (or blogs) to prepare for your Thanksgiving feast, you’ve probably seen a lot of talk about brining the turkey in recent years. Soaking the bird in a saltwater is supposed to add s

Meatless Monday: Creamy Lima Beans
I can’t say I have a particular affinity for lima beans, but I’ve never feared them the way so many people (my mother included) do. Call it more a casual indifference. But when I saw the pretty little pale-green beans, pre-shelled, in a basket at Alexandria’s West End market recently, I couldn’t resist. This simple preparation brought out the beans’ natural creaminess without obscuring their mild flavor. Next time, I might use more garlic instead of onion, but otherwise it was pretty good. And, the husband didn’t hate them, so I’ll count that in the Meatless Monday win column. (The boy is adamant about eating his green veggies frozen at the momen