Turkey Meatball Soup With Kale + Mushrooms

Happy New Year, Friends!

You know how the presence of a new year has everybody feverishly whipped up in a resolution making tizzy? I get it. It feels like a fresh slate that needs to be marked with promises to oneself about how many vegetables we plan on cramming into our bodies. A sense of pressure builds towards midnight, until you find yourself on the couch blurting out random things you plan to do in 2016 to your husband. He looks on at your quizzically, as you shout things like “I’M GONNA MOVE MORE!” and “UKULELE LESSONS!!!”. […]

Dad’s Favorite Spicy Sausage Soup with Kale

I spent eight years of my life in Los Angeles going to college, falling in love, and enacting all of the insecure “what do I want to do with my life?!” agony that a young twenty-something faces. After college I went to school for make-up artistry in Burbank, and spent lots of days in a hot room with other girls who liked lipstick. We learned how to do makeup for every occasion, and then we learned how to make realistic bullet holes and third degree burns. I worked as a photographer, taking head-shots of other insecure twenty-somethings trying to make it in Hollywood. I worked as a teacher. That was my favorite job. Kids are never boring. Ever. […]

Rustic Beef, Tomato & Cabbage Stew

There are few things I find more satisfying than a bowl of soup!

In the same vein, there are few things I find more dissatisfying than coming home to a sad, random, slightly bare and slightly rotten fridge. You know the kind. Maybe you go away for a weekend, and then Monday evening rolls around. You open up your fridge to discover a couple of carrots, an egg carton with one whole egg and six egg shells (whoops), half a cabbage, and a Tupperware full of  already-dressed, already-soggy salad. This feels bad. This feels confrontational. Your fridge doesn’t seem to get that you are hungry and you need it to go to the store for you. You’re tired. You’re hungry. You’re in no mood for grocery shopping. You protest by eating half a jar of pickles. […]

Roasted Kabocha Squash, Carrot & Ginger Soup With Lamb Meatballs

So, I haven’t eaten eggs, tomatoes, peppers, white potatoes, eggplant, grains, dairy or nuts in about twelve days.

I’m doing a bit of an elimination diet in order to detect some suspected food allergies. I’m not going to lie to you, it could be easier. In the past twelve days I’ve realized I feel slightly paralyzed without eggs and I put tomatoes in nearly everything. But, in the hopes of not freaking out and attempting to sell my kidney on the black market for a plate of runny-yolked gold, I’ve been trying my best to make satiating meals that aren’t lacking in flavor. However, I’d like to reiterate that taking away things like tomatoes and chili powder and paprika make me feel like I’m cooking with a couple of those lobster claw oven mitts on. A little clumsy. A little frustrated. A little confused as to why I have lobster claws instead of hands. I’m sure there were like a zillion better, more coherent similes that I could have used right there. But, of course, I went oven mitts. Oy. […]