It is officially spring. But official spring never feels like the spring that exists in my imagination. The mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful spring with green shoots and sun peaking through rain and warm breezes and new beginnings. Official spring in Chicago is something altogether different. It is one day in a series of false starts. It is …
Salad
Sometimes I forget that I like salad. I remember that I should eat salad, and then I react against the idea with the sulky resentment of a teenager. I go through phases when I dutifully buy bagged baby greens only to pull them out from the crisper drawer, strange and slimy, a few weeks later. In …
Now that it’s fall, can we talk about butternut squash for a minute? I love its flavor, but I have to confess that I find it to be kind of a pain to break down. It’s such an awkward shape to cut, and I’m short enough that it’s difficult for me to get good leverage …
With the normal thrum of busy lives it can be tough to take time to make a real meal with fresh ingredients. But I hate to miss out on the late summer produce that’s so plentiful this time of year. I especially hate to miss out on in-season tomatoes. They don’t even have to be …
This has become my salad of the summer. More specifically, this basil vinaigrette has become my salad dressing of the summer. I love basil. When it’s in season at the farmers market I come home with a big bunch of it every week. I, like most people, usually use it to make pesto or sprinkle shreds of it …
Summer calls out for salads like this one. It’s bold and colorful and crunchy and spicy and refreshing. I’ll admit I don’t think about green beans all that often. It’s not that I don’t like them. It’s just that I forget about them amid the bounty of summer vegetables that are crowding the farmers markets …