Cooking

The comfort of a bowl of slow-simmered chicken soup.

Eating seafood, and fish specifically, can have numerous health benefits. Seafood generally offers high-quality protein rich in omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals – essential nutrients for brain and heart health. Many of us might be a little healthier if we increased our seafood consumption (use sustainable seafood, please).

Smiling through the overwhelm of the huge late-season harvest, gardeners often deploy the genial phrase, “dealing with abundance.” Although mounds of produce is a gift like no other, it comes with a lot of chores.

When life feels heavy and overwhelming, I do something that might sound like a cliché, but it works for me. I close my eyes, and imagine myself in my happy place.

Take a look at cuisines from around the world, and you’re guaranteed to find dishes with a particular superpower: They let you throw in whatever food you’ve got. Stews that accommodate this and that. Egg ensembles into which you can stir nearly anything. A dough or pastry that disappears meats and veggies. These flexible recipes fight food waste and save money, one half-eaten onion at a time.

Do you consider instant ramen to be a “superhero in the pantry”? Food entrepreneur Peter Kim does, so much so that he wrote a whole cookbook about it. Why? “It’s cheap, it’s accessible, it takes no time to make. The seasoning sachet all but ensures a baseline level of deliciousness,” Kim said over a video call. “And then the noodles give you enough heft to the meal that you don’t have to worry about, say, making a side of rice or making potatoes or whatever. ... All you really have to think about as a home cook using instant ramen is where do I want to take the flavor?”

Sprinkling a salad with a smattering of fruit and toasted nuts is a simple and healthy way to elevate it, adding bursts of juicy sweetness and crunch. But why stop at just a sprinkle? This recipe piles them on, casting apples – which are starting to appear at farmers markets – and nuts front and center as main characters supported by a chorus of greens.

It may seem too early in the school year to bring up that scourge of school lunches: monotony. With five school lunches a week, week in and week out, the monotony trolls can rear their heads soon enough.

When I was a 19-year-old college student studying nutrition, I took a year off from school to travel the world while working as a model, a job that proved more arduous and less glamorous than it might sound, but eye-opening, nonetheless. Modeling is a bit like acting, in that big-name celebrities make millions, but most in the field consider themselves lucky to make a decent living at it. For me, it met my goal of paying for my education.

The nutrition geek in me is on full display when I talk about soy foods – I could be accused of getting overly giddy about them. Here’s why: Soy is one of the few plant foods that’s a complete protein, with all the essential amino acids in sufficient proportions. It contains healthy unsaturated fats, as well as compounds called isoflavones. The latter are rich with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, and have been shown to reduce cancer risk, improve heart health, help alleviate hot flashes, improve signs of skin-aging and more.

Toward the end of last August, when the melons and peaches at the market mingled with gigantic heads of broccoli and plump plums, friends and family came to visit. Among them was Granny Kathy. Though Kathy was excited to meet little Cyrus, she made sure to clarify that she wasn’t much of a baby person. “But let me know if there’s anything around the house I can help with,” she said in a text exchange, noting that she had worked as a plumber in an earlier stage of her career. My partner, Joe, and I were excited to see her regardless, and I thought about how I could make her feel welcome. “What can I cook for you while you’re here?” I texted.

Labor Day is Monday, and many will be planning a holiday dinner or barbeque at home. Whether preparing a Labor Day meal for two or hosting a California-style garden dinner for six- such as those featured in Sunset magazine- today’s recipes can produce dishes that will fit right in.

LOS ANGELES -- For Rebecca Zeitlin, packing her 5-year-old son's school lunch is always full of surprises. Offer him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at home and he won't touch it. But pack it in his lunch with fruits, vegetables and a small treat and he'll dive in. He will "chow down" on applesauce at preschool parties. But if she served him applesauce at home, "he'd look at me like I was ...

It’s hard but rewarding work coming up with recipes to share every week for this column. The inspiration can come from a variety of places: trends I’ve seen on social media, cookbooks that I wish to highlight, scientific studies and new-to-me creations from my own brain. The latter usually begins with a single ingredient, often seasonal, and then I let my culinary intuition and flavor research go from there. May I present to the court exhibit 3,894: this gochujang eggplant stir-fry.

The rich, earthy mushroom known for adding a sublime finishing touch to a dollop of whipped cream, a bubbling dish of fondue or a steaming plate of pasta just got a little fancier.

I know I say this every year, but it seemed like zucchini season got off to a slow start.

LYNDEN, Whatcom County — Even if you’ve never been to Lynden, there’s a good chance you’ve eaten the raspberries grown here. They’re just not the ones you find in the plastic clamshell in the produce section. Labeled generically as “U.S.-grown raspberries,” you’ll find them all over the grocery store: in the frozen triple berry blend and the raspberry lemon muffins at Costco. In Tillamook’s ...

It’s that time of year when return-to-school activities are ramping up. Parents, kids and school staff are increasingly focusing on preparations for the approaching school year. Registrations, launch conferences, purchasing school clothes and supplies, transportation and meal planning, obtaining physicals for athletics and renting a trombone for the aspiring marching band musician in the family. The to-do list can seem endless.

There is no escaping the sense that we are living in the era of peak protein, a moment in time in which reverence for the macronutrient borders on religion.