Cooking

Watching news reports of Haitian kids being forced to stay home from school to prevent violent attacks in Springfield, Ohio, makes me cry about my own childhood in New York.

I adore beets of all kinds: the earthy sweet, the lurid magenta, the striped pink and the goldens. Sure, they’re not to everyone’s taste, but their strong character stands up to a range of intense flavors – vinegar, horseradish, mustard, piquant dairy sauces, vinaigrettes, smoked fish.

With the onset of fall weather, it’s a good time to think about throwing a chicken into the pot. For those who like chicken, that is. Our apologies to those who don’t.

This March, I felt the ground thaw after an unusually difficult winter. Cherry blossom buds popped up on craggy branches, and our dogwoods’ bracts sprang open. As April approached, I caught myself smiling, finally, as the daffodils curled their necks up to the sky.

The health benefits and sheer earthy deliciousness of lentils may be some of the best-kept food secrets outside of the Palouse. Until my school days at the University of Idaho, my only exposure to lentils was enduring an occasional can of Progresso’s lentil soup during my early college years in Seattle. My family were pinto bean people. I’d never even seen a lentil, domesticated or in the wild, until then.

Nisha Vora’s evolution as a vegan cook sounds so familiar. When she first decided to go vegan eight years ago, she says, “I didn’t know how to make my food taste interesting.” That’s because, like so many others in her position (including me), she was single-mindedly focused on what she subtracted from her go-to dishes to adapt them to her new diet.

Here’s the second installment of our Back-to-School recipes. Today’s brief introduction let’s us squeeze one more recipe in for your enjoyment.

The start of the school year is an explosion of activity and adjustment. It’s a time of excitement and challenge, occasionally accompanied by moments of sheer exasperation and exhaustion for parents and kids alike. Today’s recipes are selected to assist busy families and college students living independently with some of that. The rest of us can enjoy them, too.

Labor Day reminds me of New Year’s but with fewer fireworks, less noise and the absence of a crystal ball dropping in Times Square. Like New Year’s, Labor Day is a time of transition. Originally a tribute to American workers, the “workmen’s holiday” has morphed into a celebration (or mourning, perhaps) of the end of summer, amid the onset of substantial change in season and routine, especially, if school is involved.

It’s the second most wonderful time of the year!

How to describe sumac?

Life pulls you in different directions, creating distance even between the closest of bonds. Yet, time seems to stop in the kitchen, and the world feels just a little lighter.

We all know the value of starting the day with a healthy and filling breakfast. Although, some of us still insist that plenty of coffee is all we really need.

Come August, you’ll find farmers market stands laden with bright, juicy tomatoes, vfresh zucchini and various nightshades in peak form, and somehow, they all end up coming home with you. A ratatouille galette, with its flaky, buttery crust and layers of tender, roasted vegetables, is the perfect vessel for all that peak-season deliciousness.

The great Italian chef Luigi Portabello once proclaimed, “Bread feedsa the masses, but pizza feedsa the soul!” OK, I may have just made all of that up. If there ever were a real-life Luigi Portabello, I’m sure he’d agree with that quoted sentiment, just like the rest of us.

I know summer has officially set in when I opt for hearty, easy-to-make salads that can last a day or so in the refrigerator. I could blame it on the fact my kitchen doesn't have air-conditioning, but really, it's just that warm and sunny weather makes me so lazy when it comes to meal prep. I'd much rather be hanging out on my porch reading a book or riding my bike. Working up a sweat over a ...

When Madison Stoltz began baking at age 8, she quickly layered on a creative flair for cakes and buttercream frosting. A few years later, she launched her sole Spokane business, Snak Rabbit, as a bakery and now operates out of a small home kitchen  to handle special orders, sweets catered for small events and more recently treats cooked up for the Perry Street Thursday Market during most weeks this summer.

For an ingredient with such a small footprint, there is a whole lot of ground to cover when it comes to salt. How much to use? What type? Should you even use salt at all?

Most of us have directly experienced the trauma of recent price increases in the fast-food world. Those prices make today’s recipes for takeout burgers seem particularly appetizing. Depending on your fondness for, or dare I say addiction to, takeout burgers, these recipes may even offer a timely lifeline.