Category Easy Meals

There’s something humbling about a dish that rescues you more than once. I first made tuna pasta salad on a muggy Tuesday evening, sometime in late August, when the fridge held only what I now call “end-of-the-week odds and ends.”…

I still remember the first time I grilled cauliflower. It was one of those evenings where the fridge was mostly bare, and I was determined not to order takeout. I had a head of cauliflower, some olive oil, and a…

There’s something a little magical about garlic bread, don’t you think? I remember the first time I tried to make it from scratch. I was nineteen, living in my first apartment—a tiny one-bedroom with slanted floors and cabinets that never…

I didn’t grow up eating avocado toast. Back in my small-town Midwest kitchen, we made toast with butter and the occasional spoonful of grape jelly if we were feeling fancy. Avocados were rare and oddly exotic, something you’d hear about…

There was a summer evening not too long ago—one of those golden-hour moments when the kitchen windows are cracked just enough to let the breeze in, and everything feels slower, easier. I’d spent the day in the garden, trying (and…

There’s something quietly transformative about the way a simple bowl of food can ground you. I remember the first time I threw together what would eventually become this Salmon & Quinoa Bowl. It was a Tuesday—one of those days that…

There’s something about the smell of fish grilling over open flames that takes me straight back to a small beach shack we stumbled upon in Baja years ago. We’d been driving for hours with the windows down, salt in our…

There’s a memory I come back to every time I make beef and broccoli. It was a Monday evening after a long day of school pickups, a cranky toddler meltdown in the middle of the produce aisle, and one too…

When summer hits, my kitchen spills out onto the patio—and that’s when the real magic happens. Whether it’s the sizzle of shrimp tacos hitting the grill, the smoky aroma of BBQ chicken wraps, or the first juicy bite of a…

There’s something timeless about scalloped potatoes. Rich, creamy, golden on top, tender inside—this is comfort food at its finest. Growing up, scalloped potatoes were always part of our holiday spread. My mom made them every Easter and Thanksgiving, and I…