There is a jar of this chimichurri sauce in my fridge at all times. It add tons of flavor to steak, chicken, seafood and even bigs bowls of veggies and rice. I know that adding mint into a chimichurri is a little unconventional but if mint is not your thing, just replace it with more parsley. Also my secret ingredient is a little bit of honey -that sweetness balances the acidity and makes it perfect.
Read MoreI am back with another one-pot pasta! This one is filled with brussels sprouts and chicken apple sausage.
Read MoreI met a pet pig named Oliver recently, (that sounds like the start of a joke, right?) Well no joke, I met a real life pet pig - evidence here and here. We hung out for a bit and snuggled and I realized that I need to lay off the pork for a while. Because he pretty much was the cutest thing ever. And that is what I am doing for a little while at least.
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Just call me pie lady. I feel like all I have been making these days are pie. Which is totally fine by me, because I love pie, it might just be the perfect food. But I promise to start sharing recipes for other things beside pie, soon but not today.
Read MoreEveryone needs a birthday cake recipe in their repertoire. One that you can bust out to make a killer birthday cake or any type of cake for that matter. Well here it is, the only yellow cake recipe you will ever need. Promise. The only one you will ever need. With the perfect vanilla taste and tender crumb here is the ultimate yellow cake recipe.
Read MoreMy sister came to visit me last week and we were talking food (what else do I talk about) and she told me about this new appliance that she is obsessed with. The appliance is an electric pressure cooker called Instant Pot. I was totally intrigued by this thing (it has almost 10K positive reviews on Amazon!) so I snapped one up and decided to discover what all the fuss was about. Well long story short, I am sold...
Read MoreI am a total creature of habit, especially when it comes to food. When I find a good thing, I eat it over and over again. Most recent case and point, granola. I am obsessed with granola for breakfast. Topped with fresh summer fruit and yogurt, it is perfection. But do you know what is not perfection? The cost of granola at the grocery store. It is way more money than I am willing to spend, so I developed my own recipe and I can't get enough of it.
Read MoreI have been digging galettes hard these days. They are just so easy - they might just be the perfect summer dessert. They are fast, delicious and rustic, not to mention so much easier than pies and take half the time. Let me breakdown this delicious recipe for a blueberry cardamom galette...
Read MoreWay back in the day, I was a lowly prep cook at a Michelin starred Italian restaurant in SF. It was my first "job" out of culinary school and it was intense. Most of my day was spent doing tasks that were tedious and boring (and frankly kind of awful). But on special occasions the man in charge of the pasta station would let me help make the fresh pasta...
Read MoreI recently discovered roasted peanut flour thanks to a subscription box someone gifted me. I had never heard of it before - have you? Well I am hooked, once you open the bag, the amazing aroma of delicious roasted peanuts is a total game changer. Once I tasted it, I knew it would be perfect in peanut butter brownies...
Read MoreSo we are officially at the height of summer and with that comes all sorts of amazing produce. My all-time favorite summer produce is heirloom tomatoes (well to be honest it is a three way tie between heirloom tomatoes, figs and white nectarines) But the color and taste of in-season heirloom tomatoes cannot be beat. I look forward to them all year...
Read MoreHappy Monday! I thought I would start a new series on here - a quick and easy recipe series. Recipes that are 30 minutes or less with as few ingredients as possible. So lets kick this off with a miso ginger salmon. It is the perfect weeknight meal.
Read MoreI loved, loved, loved cooking school. It honestly was one of the best experiences ever. I still have my textbooks and binder from cooking school that I look back through often for inspiration and recipes. I was looking back through it recently and I realized there were a couple things from my cooking school experience that I will never make/do again.
Read MoreWe have landed in LA. It has been a rough and crazy couple weeks but we are officially LA residents. I don't think it has hit me yet because I am just so busy. Between my 36 hour trip last week to speak at the Samsung event space and a top secret baking cookbook I am helping to write, I don't know up from down. Which is good and bad. On the one hand it is good because there hasn't been time to really process that we are in a new city trying to make new friends and find new places to eat, things to do. But bad because one day in a couple months I am going to wake up and realize I no longer live in the Bay Area. But I guess denial is good right?
Read MoreI am pretty sure I ate sandwiches most of my childhood. Tuna fish sandwiches to be exact. That and a good peanut butter and jelly –that was a staple. I have recently discovered my love for a chicken salad sandwich that put all those tuna fish sandwiches and PB &Js to shame. I know what you are thinking, why in the world would I need a recipe for chicken salad? Well because this one is all you will ever need, it is that delicious. I was never a huge fan of chicken salad until I developed this recipe. I developed it one day when I had an extra chicken that was roasted off and was trying to figure out what to do with it. I wanted to do something interesting with it, because well, chicken can be so boring and dry sometimes,especially as leftovers.
Read MoreI love a good margarita. Don't give me a sugary drink that has sweet and sour mix. No way - that is a one way ticket to a hangover. Give me a simple but delicious margarita made with tequila, lime juice, and simple syrup. Oh and my secret ingredient, elderberry liquor ( St. Germain). Elderberry gives the margarita a sweet fragrant -but no overpowering -floral taste which I am obsessed with. If elderberry is not your thing just replace with cointreau or skip it all together. Here is a little video I created showing you how to create the perfect margarita. Pair it with some guacamole and maybe a taco or two and you have the world's most perfect meal.
Read MoreYou guys, I had one of the coolest afternoons yesterday. Don't judge me because I am a total dork but I had a meeting at one of the cookbook publishing mecca's -Ten Speed Press. I know this is so unexciting to you but really exciting to me - I am a huge fan (borderline hoarder) of cookbooks and in all the land, Ten Speed produces some of my favorites. The halls were lined with gorgeous pictures of food and the best part was I got to go into their library where I was literally surrounded wall to wall with every cookbook I could dream of. I died. Honest to goodness heaven for a cookbook hoarder. I could just move in and be surrounded by cookbooks and live happily ever after. One of these days I am going to do a cookbook round-up but until then here are some cookbooks I am drooling over: Camino (local Oakland restaurant) Hartwood (makes me want to hope on a plane and fly to Tulum immediately) and Sweeter off the Vine (because who doesn't love a cookbook based solely on baking with fruit)
Read MoreFull confession, I love hippie food. The crazier concoction the better. If it looks like twigs and berries and promises that it is good for me I am sold. I think this fascination with natural foods comes from walking the aisles of a natural food store growing up. I can still smell that store - with its carob chips pretending to be chocolate chips and patchouli soap (I still love both for the record). My fascination continues since we live so close to Berkeley's famous Berkley Bowl, where it seems cool to be into natural food stores. (I think I found my people!)
Read MoreI spent this past weekend in LA. I love LA... I think. Or maybe strongly like. I used to overlook it as a town filled with nothing but movie star hopefuls but the more time I spend there, the more I am drawn to it. Although for the record I do not love the traffic. It is a whole different beast compared to the Bay Area. However I do love the food world there. There is some really interesting stuff happening with food and I was excited to get a glimpse of it this past weekend. I was in town for a food conference (IACP) which is a food industry conference that focused a lot on social media, blogs and video this year. It was really interesting to see what people are doing in this space. It is almost like the Wild West in that the possibilities are endless, especially in online food video/YouTube. Really inspiring. So if I can just get over looking at myself on camera I am going to put out some YouTube videos (there are already some of me for Williams-Sonoma floating around which you can view here. Eeks! )
Read MoreI feel like I have been running around like a crazy person lately. Not sure why but life is just busy right now. Busy and a little bit in flux but I guess that is life, right?
It was Luke's birthday this week so we have been doing a little celebrating. This past weekend I hosted a little get together for friends. Our house isn't that huge but I love having everyone over to celebrate - so much easier than trying to coordinate a restaurant. So we just pile everyone in and they sit and eat wherever they can find a spot. Plus we are so lucky, we have too many friends to fit in a restaurant. The dinner was totally easy and casual - the hardest part was cleaning up our back. After all the rain the Bay Area has had over the past few months, our backyard looked like a jungle. Our backyard is one of my favorite parts of this house. It is small but there is a table, an outdoor fire pit and some string lights - all you need for a party. We have had pretty epic nights back there. On my list is to really make it nice with plants and landscaping but one thing at a time right?
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