I begin this tale with a miniature story, which shall lead into a caveat.
What To Do With Such A Flock of Fungi?!
Posts Tagged: Recipes
The Tasting Menu
The day after Kendrick and I got engaged, we drove back to my house in Los Angeles and sat in my backyard with a Brides magazine, cooking burgers and staring at the ring on my left hand and drinking sparkly drinks and just generally wondering at our new reality. And at one point, I remember, Kendrick looked at me and said, “Can every day really be like this?”
And I knew exactly what he meant. It wasn’t about the burgers or the California sun or even about our engagement; it was about the fact that it was nothing more than a Monday afternoon, but it felt like a celebration. Not of our engagement; of us. Of our life.
Ever since that day – and I think about it all the time – I’ve tried to consciously look for ways to incorporate those mini-celebrations into even the most ordinary of days. Take the afternoon off to go see a matinee, or drizzle chocolate balsamic on some strawberries, or drink a glass of prosecco with dessert. Just because.
What you see in these photos is a pretty good example of how I try to operate when it comes to our evenings: keeping things simple, but adding little upgrades wherever I can. The Ecco Domani wines pictured here, for example, aren’t about being fancy; they’re about taking a second to recognize that a day doesn’t have to be extraordinary to be special.
Fettuccine with Shrimp, Peas and Spinach
I'm over winter.
I'm over the snow. Over the heating bill. Over the fact that my car's steering wheel apparently stops moving when it drops below twenty degrees.
I'm even over the stews and soups, and as much as I adore my slow-cooker, I'm ready to retire it in favor of all things springy and light. Mostly, I'm ready for seafood and white wine and fresh vegetables.
Easy, Hearty Beef & Rice Stew
Here is what I think you should make this weekend:
This.
Oh my god, it's so good. It's like everything that's wonderful about winter, and is really best served in the presence of a Christmas tree. You can make it in a slow-cooker if you want, but I only remembered that I wanted to make stew for dinner around 3PM, so I used a regular stovetop pot, and it was done by six P.M. Vegetables, protein, a little carbs, a lot of deliciousness…it's all in there in that one pot.
Thanksgiving Side Dish: Citrusy Quinoa Salad With Pomegranates And Cranberries
I don’t typically pepper my diet with items that could be referred to as “superfoods.” I mean, I know I should, but I just…don’t. Because when I hear “healthy grain” what that translates to in my head is “cardboard.” And cardboard is not especially delicious.
But the thing about these superfoods – and quinoa, which is full of protein, fiber, iron, and lysine (essential for tissue growth and repair, making it a big skin-health booster) in particular – is that while they may not be something you’d want to eat a huge bowl of on their own, they’re excellent delivery systems for much more delicious things. My favorite additions: a citrusy vinaigrette and an assortment of fruits (antioxidant-rich pomegranate seeds and cranberries and vitamin C-filled orange) that are both good-tasting and good for you.
Bonus: this makes for a very, very pretty autumnal side dish, and an unexpected (and super-healthy) addition to your Thanksgiving table.
Chocolate Pumpkin Seed Bark
I love candy corn as much as the next girl, but sometimes you want something a little less sugar-saturated on Halloween. Maybe even – dare I say it? – a tiny bit healthy (and no, I’m not advising you to hand out boxes of raisins to trick o’ treaters instead of Snickers bars – I’m not that much of a Scrooge).
Presenting: a festive – and at least semi-good-for-you – twist on a seasonal favorite. The dark chocolate contains antioxidants that help to protect your skin from UV damage and fight free radicals, and the pumpkin seeds contain zinc and selenium to help boost your skin’s collagen production and protect against environmental pollution. To get even more skin protection (yes, even in the cool weather), don’t forget to moisturize with an SPF-containing product like Simple Skincare Protecting Light Moisturizer SPF 15.
A dessert that’s addictively delicious and phenomenal for your face? Win.
Easy Steak & Avocado Fajitas
An addition to my roster of blink-and-they're done dinners: these. We're talking ten minutes. (Well, ten minutes if you don't include a couple of hours of zero-labor marinating…which I suppose you don't have to do, but it makes a huge difference.)
I've been making these minimum once a week lately, mostly to take advantage of these last few weeks of grilling-outdoors weather, but you can totally make them on a stovetop grill, no problem (because they're made with thinly sliced skirt steak, they cook up super-fast). They're great for an easy weeknight dinner, but if you just double (or triple) the ingredients you can just as easily serve dinner to a whole party (which is what I did last night - and the best part is that you really don't need any side dishes with these; just add prosecco and everyone will be happy).
What You Need:
Lemon Pappardelle With Potatoes & Haricots Verts
The summer after my junior year of high school, my friend Thomasin and I spent a couple of months attending art school in Paris (which sounds ridiculously fancy for a couple of teenagers, and kind of was). We lived in dorms that were filled with college students during the regular school year, and while we were technically supervised, we really…weren't. Which meant we did our best to get into as much trouble as possible, and when that turned out to be not very much trouble at all (because we were both a little more "nervous good girls" than "madcap European bon vivants"), we hung around the dorm with our friends, essentially playing grown-up.
Our favorite weekend activity: trucking down to the grocery store on the corner for cooking supplies, and then using the tiny kitchen in our dorm to make what felt, to us, like sophisticated meals...but were actually just the most rudimentary pasta dishes ever. We ate them with chopsticks, sitting in a circle on the floor around the one big cooking pot we shared, because we hadn't thought to bring things like bowls and forks. We would have told you that we didn't just go out and buy bowls and forks because we "couldn't afford them" or because we were "too lazy to go to the store"…but neither of those reasons would have been the truth.
The truth was that we didn't buy them because we didn't want them, because the very best part of those meals was that we ate them crowded around a single pot with friends we thought we'd have forever, laughing until we couldn't breathe.
Easy Breaded Veal Cutlets
Veal almost never occurs to me as something you can actually eat.
When I see veal listed on a restaurant menu, my eyes skip right past it. I've bought it in the grocery store maybe five times in my life.
It even took me a second to remember what kind of meat it is (ssh). It's safe to say the stuff is off my radar.
Pasta With Ricotta, Olives & Tomatoes
This pasta dish - which reminds me of Caprese Pasta, but is just a little more salty and spicy and grown-up tasting - is both awesome and awesomely summery. It's one of those dishes that takes thirty seconds and can probably be assembled from stuff you already have in your refrigerator (especially if you happen to be Italian and keep things like dry ricotta hanging around, in which case you probably don't need my advice on excellent pasta combinations), and that makes the perfect addition to a day at the beach, or a picnic, or a backyard BBQ.
Or the middle of the afternoon for no reason whatsoever, because it's just that good.
P.S. I take zero credit for this dish: Francesca's mother made it as part of our dinner last weekend; yet another example of Why I Love Visiting Francesca's Family.
