YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Red Cabbage Salad With A Buzz

It’s a red-green party, lunch for a week with spicy, crunchy, sour power! Make some for you, or your gang, or your office potluck! When I saw this recipe I knew it was for me. Generally speaking, cabbage is one of those foods that is very underrated — especially the red kind. Continue reading


YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Slow Chicken & White Beans

In honor of the upcoming marriage of HLJ to ESS:
Here’s a magnificent recipe, inspired by the fact that this year is the #Year of the #Pulse! You know how much I love beans and the flavors developed by slow cooking! Try putting it up right now, and you’ll have a very special, delicious and nutritious meal for dinner tonight. Of course, if you’re me, you might decide to make it tonight instead of in the morning, so it will be ready just in time for breakfast tomorrow.
Whenever food cooks in our slow cooker through the night, it gives me delicious dreams. Sometimes it even wakes me up, a few times for a few moments, to savor the smells. Then, when morning comes, I can barely get myself up and dressed fast enough in my hurry to get downstairs to eat my yummy breakfast from the crockpot! I’m not kidding — consider yourself forewarned.

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YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Glazed & Braised Onions

Sometimes, especially around the holidays, more than one family member stops at the supermarket to pick up a few things before heading home at the end of the work day. Sometimes, unbeknownst to one another, each family member picks up precisely the same item, and then that’s how you end up with three large bags of onions. And sometimes the kitchen counter fills up with a number of mostly empty bottles of wine. Here’s what to do when this happens to you. Continue reading


YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Roasted Carrot & Fennel Soup

Please meet one of my favorite new food writers, Jessica Fechtor, who writes on her blog Sweet Amandine and whose first book, Stir, reached the NYTimes bestseller list in recent weeks! What a grand success for a newly published author! Yes, I read it and, yes, it was wonderful! Stir, by the way, is not just about food. It’s about how finding her way around the kitchen was how Jessica found her way back to living after a brain aneurysm and its aftermath left her overwhelmed and unsure of absolutely everything.   Continue reading


YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Roasted Butternut Squash Extraordinaire

If I were to pick a single food that best embodied the fall season, it would definitely be squash. And if I were to consider how best to prepare that squash to make it taste as delicious as possible, showing off its very best qualities, then this is the recipe I would choose. I would definitely recommend that you give this recipe a shot! Now (speaking of shots), you should feel free to try it with or without the whiskey. In case you were wondering, the alcohol burns off with the cooking, leaving behind that little extra dimension of flavor. But if it doesn’t appeal, just skip it. Continue reading