Category — Fast and Easy Recipes

{recipe} Finnish Pancake with Raspberry Red Wine Sauce

And now I am going to tell you what to make for breakfast on Christmas morning. With a mere 5 ingredients, 5 minutes of prep, and 25 minutes in the oven, you can have a rich, custardy, puffy, wonderful breakfast on the table.

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December 20, 2011   17 Comments

{recipe, kind of} Rainbow Rice Krispy Treats

It’s gray and dull outside, so I felt like sharing a colorful rainbow today.

I don’t understand why, but if you make rice krispy treats with Fruity Pebbles cereal instead of Rice Krispies, people will act like you are a genius. Kids, adults, whatever- it amazes them that you thought of this. And I think they taste quite a bit more exciting than run-of-the-mill krispy treats!

Here’s how you make them: Make the original, standard Rice Krispy treats recipe, but use Fruity Pebbles instead. That’s it. I stacked these wedding cake-style with parchment rounds in between to make them seem fancy. You can use Cocoa Pebbles if you prefer, or even a mix of Cocoa Pebbles and Rice Krispies, but they won’t have quite the visual wow factor that only a sugary cereal’s neon food dyes can offer!

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November 28, 2011   6 Comments

{recipe and knowledge} Easy Homemade Hot Cocoa, and How to Eat Chocolate Without Supporting Child Slavery

Lately I’ve been cuckoo for hot cocoa. Maybe it’s the fall chill in the air, maybe it’s the dewy nights, or maybe I just like milky, sugary, chocolate bombs delivered in hot liquid form. No matter the reason, I decided it would be wise to stop spending 3 bucks a day on ho-hum coffee shop cocoa and just make my own. This is cheaper and better, it’s not nearly as cloyingly sweet, and it takes all of about 2 minutes. It’s quick without the Qwik!

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October 24, 2011   8 Comments

{recipe} Easy Oven Barley “Risotto”

As much as I hate unnecessary quotation marks, I can’t think of any other term for this. The process is so simple, with a little time on the stovetop and the bulk of the time in the oven, and yet the texture comes out closer to risotto than anything else. More good news: it’s almost impossible to overcook it, too.

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October 1, 2011   4 Comments

{recipe} Creamy Heirloom Tomato Gazpacho

In San Francisco, we suffer through a cold and foggy July and August  in anticipation of the warm, sunny Indian summer days that arrive during September and October. While our East Coast counterparts are thinking about pulling out winter coats and boots, in the Bay Area we’re just breaking in our shorts and flip-flops to soak up these late-arriving rays. The heirloom tomatoes are perfectly ripe and the sun is out, so what better time to make cool, creamy gazpacho?

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September 1, 2011   5 Comments

{recipe} Watermelon Salad with Feta and Mint

This is so good that I can’t wait to share it with you- I’m still eating it as I type. It only takes about 5 minutes to make, and I think as long as watermelon is in season, I might have to eat it every day.

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August 28, 2011   1 Comment

{recipe} Roasted Sweet Potato & Cauliflower Puree

I’m a big fan of pureed cauliflower as a side dish (in fact, I posted a recipe for it  recipe for it pretty recently.) Sometimes a big bowl of white mush isn’t what I’m after, so I thought I’d try to add some color and some nutritional value by combining it with sweet potatoes. Roasting all of the vegetables together in the oven with cumin and olive oil is easy and low-maintenance, and adds a bit of that caramelized flavor to the end product. A few times around the food processor with Greek yogurt and you’ll have a creamy, satisfying side dish in no time.

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August 4, 2011   3 Comments

{how to} Five Minute Padron Peppers

Every year, it seems like all of the restaurants get together and decide they’re going to put some new food on every single menu in town. Whether it’s purslane, chicories, Calabrian chiles, or ramps–I’m quite convinced that the restaurant mafia is constantly figuring out how to promote some non-mainstream produce item that suddenly shows up everywhere. A few years ago, you couldn’t eat out in San Francisco without being offered roasted Brussels sprouts (not new per se, but new to fancy food). Years before that, you couldn’t open a menu that didn’t have fingerling potatoes on it. Last year, this nouveau item was padron peppers (or sometimes, shishito peppers, which look pretty similar.)

Padron Pepper

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August 1, 2011   1 Comment

{food hack} Salsa + Guacamole = (Damn Good) Gazpacho

Earlier today I was eating the most delicious salsa (the homemade kind which is often referred to as pico de gallo, not the supermarket jar–you know, the kind that looks like this) and I found myself wondering how I could get more of it into my piehole. And was it a vegetable? And could it be a healthy lunch if it involved tortilla chips as a vehicle? And then it dawned on me: salsa is just chunky gazpacho without the cucumbers. And gazpacho is a totally reasonable thing to eat for lunch. And cucumbers are gross. But avocadoes are good, and they sometimes go in gazpacho, right?

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July 21, 2011   No Comments

{recipe} Feel Superior with Chips Made from Kale

I made some kale chips this weekend, and I was reminded how much I like kale in chip format. I think it’s mostly because the whole time I’m eating them, I feel so superior for eating KALE instead of “real” chips. It makes me feel very grown up and mature.

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May 17, 2011   3 Comments