Celebrate National Soup Month, with six delicious, savory soups

January is National Soup Month. (It’s also National Blood Donor Month, but I’ll leave that topic to the Twilight bloggers.) Here are a half dozen soup recipes from the Blue Kitchen archives—and from fellow bloggers.

My first memory of soup is when I was seven. My mom, my baby brother and I had just come to stay with my grandmother in St. Louis. It was December, and we were arriving from Southern California; the snow outside the train window as we pulled into Union Station was the first I remembered seeing. My grandmother had a big pot of vegetable soup on the stove—its aroma filled her apartment as we walked in.

This sounds like epiphany time for someone who loves food as much as I do, doesn’t it? It wasn’t. To my limited, suspicious seven-year-old palate, the soup was a vegetable-filled nightmare. I fished out the chewy meat bites, probably short ribs, and had visions of starving to death if we stayed at my grandmother’s very long. Continue reading “Celebrate National Soup Month, with six delicious, savory soups” →

Berry, beery satisfying: Beef Pot Roast with Beer and Juniper Berries

Flavorful, inexpensive beef chuck roast, braised for hours in a low oven with beer, juniper berries, onion, garlic, potatoes and carrots, is the very definition of comfort food on a winter evening. Recipe below.

WHEN THE FIRST REAL SNOWSTORM OF THE SEASON IS PREDICTED, most people stock up on sidewalk salt. I bought a chuck roast.

The snow began falling in the morning, not heavy but persistent. I happened to be working from home, and I watched the snow coating first the lawns, trees and bushes, then the sidewalks and the street outside the study window. I also kept an impatient eye on the clock, eager to start cooking our first pot roast of the year. Continue reading “Berry, beery satisfying: Beef Pot Roast with Beer and Juniper Berries” →

Fast food fast tracks Indian cuisine to mainstream

In my latest USA Character Approved Blog post, a bevy of new Indian fast food restaurants reflects the mainstreaming of food from the Subcontinent here.

Fast food gets a bad rap, often for good reason. But something it does well, I think, is spot culinary cultural trends and help make them mainstream. In many cases, it even speeds them along.

One of the latest cuisines getting the fast food fast track treatment is Indian food. Living in Chicago, we’re blessed with lots of good options for Indian food, especially along Devon Avenue. The many restaurants along the crowded street are stuffed with Indian and Pakistani immigrants as well as growing numbers of adventurous Westerners. But dinners there are often protracted affairs, and for the uninitiated, the menus can be daunting. Continue reading “Fast food fast tracks Indian cuisine to mainstream” →

One-pan impromptu in the key of winter: Pork Chops with Chickpeas, Spinach and Cumin

Chickpeas and spinach bring big health benefits to this hearty one-pan meal. Cumin, chili powder, garlic and onion bring big flavor. Recipe below.

This meal wasn’t going to be a post. It was just meant to be dinner. But suddenly, the kitchen was smelling heavenly (assuming there’s cumin in heaven, and I certainly hope so). And when I served the chops and spooned the chickpea spinach mixture next to them, the plates looked really inviting. So before cutting into my chop, I had Marion taste hers. She smiled and nodded, and here we are.

This particular dish came together because we’ve been eating too much chicken. We love chicken, but even for us, there’s been a lot of it. So when I saw a nice looking pair of pork chops in the grocery store, I grabbed them. My first thought for sides were mashed potatoes and a salad, quick and easy. But we’ve been doing those a lot lately too. Continue reading “One-pan impromptu in the key of winter: Pork Chops with Chickpeas, Spinach and Cumin” →

Bake in it, serve in it, then bury it in the yard: Biodegradable, compostable bakeware

Biosphere Industries and its biodegradable, compostable bakeware and serveware made from tapioca are the subject of my latest post on the USA Character Approved Blog.

For having such a tiny garden plot, we compost a lot. (And by we, I mean Marion, of course, the same we who does our gardening.) So when we started seeing compostable “plastic” drinking cups made from corn in some of our favorite takeout places, we got excited. Until we read the fine print. Turns out they take up to 180 days to compost in commercial composting facilities; try composting them in a home system, and they can take a year or more.

Not so with the bakeware, plates and other serving pieces from Biosphere Industries. Introduced last summer, their tapioca-based pie pans, muffin trays and other containers compost in just 10 days in commercial facilities. Continue reading “Bake in it, serve in it, then bury it in the yard: Biodegradable, compostable bakeware” →

Sweet, savory, quick, delicious: Sweet Potato Sage Pasta with Chicken

A handful of fresh ingredients—sweet potato, sage, onion, garlic and chicken—make a sweet/savory pasta dish that’s weeknight quick. Recipe below.

With holiday excesses behind us, it’s good to get back to quick, simple, everyday cooking. This dish is one of my favorite examples of that kind of cooking, in that involves fresh ingredients, using up leftovers and unexpected synapses firing.

One thing I’ve noticed in writing about food for the past five years or so is that it makes me think about food, a lot. Sometimes it seems that everything I see or read or hear or smell or taste has the potential to inspire some cooking idea. Continue reading “Sweet, savory, quick, delicious: Sweet Potato Sage Pasta with Chicken” →