Shortly after I started eating meat more regularly, I saw Ina Garten make curried chicken salad on an episode of her show, Barefoot Contessa. My immediate thought was that it looked good (and, duh, her food always looks amazing) and sounded different, but I didn't immediately put it at the top of my "recipes to try" list, and here's why.
I took a big pause at the idea of curry and chutney mixed together, really skeptical about how two strong-tasting ingredients like that would taste when mixed together. Also, I was never a big fan of traditional chicken salad. Growing up, my dad and I would go out for sandwiches for lunch on a regular basis. Whenever I ordered chicken salad from a nearby deli or restaurant, it often tasted bland and mushy, with tiny pieces of chicken and not enough crunch from celery and onion to make up for the amount of mayo put in the salad.
Knowing that Ina has rarely led me astray, I gave the recipe a try and was soon obsessed. For a while I made this salad at least once a week, without fail, to bring to work for lunch. It has a totally unexpected flavor on account of the chutney and curry, which do taste good together after all. It's creamy without tasting like eating a spoonful of mayo, and super-crunchy from the celery and cashews, one of my favorite nuts.
Ina's Curried Chicken Salad has become a pantry staple recipe; I keep the ingredients on-hand for whenever I'm in the mood to make a quick dinner or lunch for work. Using the original recipe as a guide, here are a few things that I like to adjust when I make it.
27 search results for “pantry raid”
I was craving something sweet one afternoon when I thought back to an episode of Barefoot Contessa that I watched a couple of weeks ago. Ina Garten made homemade granola bars for an episode about breakfast. Her bars featured apricots, cranberries, coconut, and slivered almonds along with oats and a base made out of sugar and honey.
I was inspired to take a look at what I had on-hand in my own kitchen to make a batch of my own. I always have pantry basics, like oats and dried fruit, on-hand for baking. What I ended up making was something that, for granola standards, was really, really tasty. [wprm-recipe-jump text="Get the recipe below."]
From big-batch cooking on the weekends, to "pantry raid" recipes for fast weeknight meals, it only takes a glance through some of my past posts to know that I'm not one to turn my nose up at a time-saving trick when it comes to making meals. Here, I'm sharing a series of a few time-savers that I've turned to often.
Search #timesavers for more helpful tricks and tips!
From big-batch cooking on the weekends, to "pantry raid" recipes for fast weeknight meals, it only takes a glance through some of my past posts to know that I'm not one to turn my nose up at a time-saving trick when it comes to making meals. Here, I'm sharing a series of classic time-savers that I've turned to often.
Stay tuned for more tips, tricks and shortcuts! For quick weeknight dinners, also search for #pantryraid.
I came across an article on MSN Food & Drink in January 2015 that outlined new things that foodies should try in the new year.
The article (now accessible via PopSugar) really inspired me over the years to make and tackle some of my own "foodie resolutions" as well as see how many I could cross off from this list. Today, I'm revisiting some of them, five years later, as a recap of what I've accomplished.
This post will be a deviation from the normal content that I typically have here, but I hope you don't mind given the circumstances?
If you've followed any type of news recently, you know that we now find ourselves faced with a very serious global health crisis.
If you asked me a year ago, even a month ago, if this is how I would've imagined the year 2020 starting out, I would've looked at you like you had 8 heads and you were talking about a plot line from a new episode of The Walking Dead or a movie that I have yet to see.
No matter how you see this playing out or believe the media, our politicians, or any others are helping address (or not) the situation, it's clear that this is far from business as usual.
Growing up in New Jersey, Italian food was a big part of my life. It seems like no matter where you go in the state, you can throw a stone and hit a pizzeria. In fact, a quick search on Yelp for "pizza" in Newark, NJ, the largest city in the state with a population of 285,154 in 2017 (Wikipedia) brought up over 620 search results for me. By contrast, a search of Flemington, NJ (Wikipedia says it had a population of 4,621 in 2017), the town where I went to high school and location of the famous Lindbergh "Trial of the Century", still brought up 28 results. I even worked at a few of those pizza places... three, actually, while I was in high school.
Can't find what you're looking for? Try refining your search:
