Cucumber Gazpacho

Spice up your summer with this easy cucumber gazpacho! Made with tomatillos, cucumber, jalapeño & cilantro, it's a cool, refreshing soup.

I love gazpacho. If it’s on a restaurant menu, I’m ordering it, and once summer rolls around, I make it at home as much as I can. To date, I’ve made gazpacho recipes out of watermelon, tomatoes (raw and roasted), corn, green apples, zucchini, and even carrots. I think it’s fun to experiment with different types of fruits and vegetables to find out if they can blend up into delicious cold soups. So why did it take me so long to think about tomatillos and cucumber?! I get giddy about tomatillo salsa, so the obvious next step was to throw…

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Vegan Ice Cream

Say hello to the BEST vegan ice cream recipe! Made with just 3 ingredients, it's super creamy, smooth, rich, delicious, and easy to make.

Meet the BEST vegan ice cream. Ever. Yep, I said it. Over the years, I’ve tried all sorts of vegan ice cream recipes, ones with bases ranging from frozen bananas to cashew milk to almond milk. For me, there’s no contest. As far as dairy-free ice cream goes, coconut ice cream is by far the best. Full-fat coconut milk adds enough richness to create a texture that is super creamy, smooth, and not at all icy. It’s rich, decadent, and every bit as good as the real thing. Best Vegan Ice Cream Recipe Ingredients Lately, this vegan ice cream recipe…

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Ultimate Crudité Platter

Move over, grocery store veggie tray - here's the ultimate crudité platter for any party! Full of sweet & savory components, it's a delicious appetizer.

I love a good crudité platter. I feel like they get a bad rap because the grocery store versions with the sad celery, raw cauliflower, and grubby carrots are never the most exciting appetizer at a party, but this board fixes that by being bright, fun, and delicious! It’s a yummy mix of fresh things, salty/savory bites, and even a sweet element from the delectable Tart Cherry Thyme Compound Butter. Each little recipe is made up of super simple combinations of creative ingredients that, together, make a really unique crudité platter! I brought this board to my family’s Father’s Day…

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Strawberry Rhubarb Bars

These easy strawberry rhubarb bars are an addictive summer treat! Made with almond flour & walnuts, they have a lightly sweet, nutty flavor.

By popular request: Strawberry Rhubarb Bars! I did a poll on Instagram last week asking which strawberry rhubarb dessert I should make. If you were one of the many that voted for crumble bars – you win! Well, actually, I win too, because these strawberry rhubarb bars are super yummy. They’re nutty, oat-y, and crisp, with that irresistible sweet/tart strawberry rhubarb flavor. Of course, they’re a delicious dessert, but they’re also pretty healthy, so I wouldn’t blame you for eating one (or more) for breakfast either. How to Make Strawberry Rhubarb Bars This strawberry rhubarb bars recipe is super easy because…

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Vegan Pasta Salad

This vegan pasta salad recipe is perfect for picnics! A creamy, no-mayo tahini dressing coats curly noodles, summer veggies, and briny artichokes.

This vegan pasta salad is basically a big bowl of sunshine! It’s full of colorful produce, like cherry tomatoes, yellow squash, and green beans, and artichokes and olives add delicious briny flavor. To tie it all together, I make a tangy, creamy tahini dressing. Because this dressing is totally mayo-free, it travels extremely well. As a result, this vegan pasta salad is a perfect dish to bring to a cookout or picnic. It’s so fresh, vibrant, and fun that I’m planning to make it all summer long. Once you try it, you will be, too! Vegan Pasta Salad Recipe Ingredients…

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Chipotle Cauliflower Nachos

The ULTIMATE vegan nachos, these are loaded with smoky cauliflower "cheese" sauce, sweet pineapple salsa, black beans, cilantro, and tomato.

If you made Thursday’s stuffed peppers and have leftover pineapple salsa and leftover chipotles, this recipe is for you! And if you didn’t, well that’s ok, you can still make it anyway 🙂 This is a nacho plate that you can feel good about! Instead of weird boxed nacho cheese, we’re making an oozy, spicy cheese-like sauce out of cauliflower. Seriously, is there anything that the mighty cauliflower can’t do? What’s in Chipotle Cauliflower “Cheese” Nacho Sauce? Good question! This irresistible sauce consists of 10 simple ingredients: Cauliflower makes up the bulk of the sauce and contributes to its luscious creamy…

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Stuffed Mini Peppers

Serve these stuffed mini peppers as a crowd-pleasing party appetizer, or pair them with smoky chipotle pinto beans and enjoy them for dinner!

These stuffed mini peppers are the perfect summer party appetizer! They’re bursting with bright, zesty flavor, they’re easy to make, and they’re just so darn cute. I already have an affinity for miniature things, so when miniature vegetables come into the picture, I’m automatically on board. I always love making stuffed red bell peppers and stuffed poblanos in the summertime, so when I saw these Organic Mini Sweet Peppers at ALDI, I immediately knew that I wanted to make a stuffed mini peppers recipe. They take everything I love about regular stuffed peppers and shrink it into a miniature, shareable…

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Vegan Sugar Cookies

These vegan sugar cookies are fun to make & fun to eat! Puffy & soft, they have a light lemon flavor that's especially good under a sweet cashew glaze.

You’re going to love these soft vegan sugar cookies! They’re the perfect fun summer treat to make with your kids. Or, if you’re like me (without kids), they’re a fun crafty cookie baking project to make while pretending to be a kid on summer break. They’d also be the perfect addition to a holiday cookie plate in the winter. They just happen to be vegan, and they’re oh so delicious. This vegan sugar cookie recipe is a little different from one for normal cookies. As you’ll see in the recipe instructions, the dough is more like pastry dough, and I…

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Four Simple Summer Snacks

Four easy, healthy, delicious snack ideas that are easy to make - perfect for busy weekdays or fun weekend bites.

On social media, everyone always talks about the concept of “not a sad desk lunch”… but what about “not-a-sad desk snack?” For me, snacks can get SO boring. Often, at 3pm when my stomach is growling, I reach for a handful of plain raw almonds because that’s all I’ve got (when I’ve already eaten through the roasted ones). And then I’m kind of bummed that I didn’t have something a little more flavorful and that I just wasted a perfectly good snack opportunity. So today – better snacks! Whether you work at a desk or you’re constantly on the go,…

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Spicy Mango, Black Bean & Avocado Tacos

What's more fun and more simple than mango tacos? Almost nothing. Serve these sweet & spicy little guys for a crowd-pleasing weeknight dinner.

I don’t care if it’s taco Tuesday, taco Wednesday, or taco Friday… to me, any day is a good day to stuff things into tortillas! Some people buy a loaf of bread every week as a grocery staple – I buy tortillas. So naturally, my on-hand tortillas came in handy as part 3 of this week’s meal plan. Here are the ingredients that I started with: from the Mango Black Bean Ginger Rice Bowls: – a chunk of green cabbage (always trying to find a use for leftover cabbage!) – black beans – mango – avocado from the Cucumber Nori…

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Nori Wraps

If you love sushi but don't love rolling it at home, these easy nori wraps are for you. They taste just as good, especially with spicy mayo drizzled on top!

Meal #2 this week: Nori wraps!  If you missed Monday’s post, I made these Mango Black Bean Ginger Rice Bowls as part of this week’s three meal series showing how ingredients from one meal can work into the next, and then again into one more. I did a similar five part plan a few months ago, and many of you wrote to tell me how helpful it was… so here we are again! At the end of the week, I’ll recap it all with a full grocery list. For this recipe, I started with these ingredients that I had on hand…

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A food blog with fresh, zesty recipes.
Photograph of Jeanine Donofrio and Jack Mathews in their kitchen

Hello, we're Jeanine and Jack.

We love to eat, travel, cook, and eat some more! We create & photograph vegetarian recipes from our home in Chicago, while our shiba pups eat the kale stems that fall on the kitchen floor.