Vegetable Soup

Make this easy vegetable soup recipe with whatever veggies you have on hand! Nourishing and light, it's perfect for warming up on cold nights.

This vegetable soup recipe is cozy, healing, and warming. It’s just the thing for cold nights, days when you’re craving a healthy reset, or any time you’re feeling a bit under the weather. I first started making it years ago, when I was bouncing back from a cold and had a ton of random veggies in the fridge. Using the ingredients I had in my pantry—vegetable broth, diced tomatoes, dried herbs, and vinegar—I transformed this jumble of vegetables into an amazing soup! Since then, I’ve made it again and again, with a different mix of veggies every time. No matter…

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Classic Mimosa Recipe

Learn how to make mimosas at home with this simple recipe! These easy 2-ingredient cocktails are guaranteed to be the star of your next brunch.

If I’m hosting a special occasion brunch, you can bet that mimosas will be on the menu. Light, fresh, and festive, they’re perfect for celebrating everything from Mother’s Day to Christmas. With citrus in peak season and New Year’s right around the corner, I thought now would be a great time to share my classic mimosa recipe. Whether you make it for a New Year’s brunch, any holiday gathering, or a lazy weekend morning, I hope you enjoy it. Cheers, friends! How to Make Mimosas Making a mimosa couldn’t be simpler, as it only requires 2 basic ingredients: chilled sparkling…

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Marinara Sauce

Make this homemade marinara sauce recipe once, and you'll never get the store-bought kind again! It's simple to make, and it has a rich tomato flavor.

Buying marinara sauce is easy, but I’ll let you in on a secret: so is making your own! Meet my go-to homemade marinara sauce recipe. It’s simple to make – all you need are 10 pantry ingredients and 30 minutes – and it tastes immeasurably better than any kind I’ve found in a jar. Its base is canned crushed tomatoes with their juices, which I simmer with sautéed shallot and garlic for depth of flavor. Red pepper flakes give it a touch of heat, and dried oregano adds Italian flair. Balsamic vinegar makes it nice and tangy, while salt and…

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Caesar Salad

This Caesar salad recipe is guaranteed to impress dinner party guests! It's topped with homemade croutons, crisp veggies, and a rich, tangy dressing.

If there’s any recipe that’ll convince someone that they love salad, it’s this Caesar salad recipe. Its base is chopped romaine lettuce and crisp veggies, but shaved cheese, homemade croutons, and a bold, creamy dressing fill it with so much flavor and texture that it hardly feels like you’re eating a plate full of vegetables! This Caesar salad recipe would be a fantastic side dish for a holiday dinner party, but, lately, we’ve even been loving it as a meal on its own. It’s the perfect fresh, yet still satisfying, break from the holiday rotation of appetizers and sweets. Pretty,…

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Homemade Caesar Dressing

This homemade Caesar dressing recipe will blow any store bought version out of the water. Made with just 7 ingredients, it's creamy, savory, and rich.

Purists will tell you that you can’t make a good Caesar dressing without an egg yolk, anchovies, and Worcestershire sauce. But here’s the thing: what I love about Caesar salad dressing is that it’s creamy, briny, tangy, and rich. I thought there had to be a way to make a dressing that checked all those boxes with totally vegetarian ingredients (and no raw eggs). Turns out, I was right! This homemade Caesar salad dressing recipe is every bit as delicious as the traditional version, and it’s so easy to make. It calls for just 7 simple ingredients, and you don’t…

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Creamy Potato Soup

We can't get enough of this easy potato soup recipe. Filled with good-for-you ingredients, it's ultra creamy and comforting, but it's nourishing, too!

We’re obsessed with this potato soup recipe! It’s luscious, creamy, and filled with bold, smoky, tangy flavor. If you have any leftovers, it tastes even better on the second day, but in our house, a pot of this soup never lasts long. In my book, this soup is perfect for the holiday season. The weather outside is frightful, so comfort food is what I’m craving. But in between all the cookies and holiday appetizers, I want to sneak in as many healthy meals as I can. That’s where this potato soup recipe comes in. Creamy and flavorful, it’ll satisfy any…

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How to Make Oatmeal

Want to learn how to make oatmeal? You're in the right place. Read on to learn about cooking different types of oats & find fun oatmeal topping ideas!

If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you know that oatmeal has never been my thing. But this fall, after I tried Amy Chaplin’s whole oat porridge recipe, I started to come around to it. See, in the past, I always had plain instant oats, which I thought were bland and mushy. But as I started experimenting with other types of oats, I discovered that, cooked the right way, oatmeal becomes a rich, creamy porridge that’s a fantastic canvas for seasonal toppings. Lately, I’ve been hooked on two topping combinations, and you’ll find them in the recipe below.…

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How to Cook Couscous

Learn how to cook couscous! Toss this tiny pasta with herbs and lemon to make a simple side dish, or try one of the couscous recipes suggested below.

If you open up my pantry, you’ll almost always find a box of couscous inside. I love keeping this quick-cooking starch on hand, as it’s an easy side dish that pairs well with all kinds of meals. Because I’m such a big couscous fan, I thought I’d dedicate today’s post to discussing what it is and how to cook it. And of course, I’ll share some of my favorite couscous recipes! First, what is couscous? Couscous might seem like grain, but it’s actually a type of pasta. First made by the Berber people of North Africa, it’s made from rolled,…

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Creamed Spinach

This creamed spinach recipe is a perfect easy side dish for holidays and weeknights alike. It's fresh, delicious, and ready in 15 minutes!

Creamed spinach is a classic steakhouse side dish, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t be making it at home. My recipe comes together in 15 minutes, and it delivers rich flavor with just a few basic ingredients! I used Jack’s mom’s creamed spinach as a starting point for this recipe. She made it for Thanksgiving every year when Jack was growing up, and he still raves about it. In developing this recipe, I wanted to capture the luxurious flavor and silky texture of her creamed spinach while putting the fresh greens front and center. Many creamed spinach recipes use frozen…

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How to Cook Tofu

Silken or extra-firm? To press or not to press? This easy baked tofu recipe + my best tips and tricks will teach you how to cook tofu like a pro!

Everyone has an opinion on tofu, and here’s mine: I absolutely love it…when it’s prepared the right way. If you’ve never worked with it before, cooking tofu can be daunting. But once you learn a little about it, it couldn’t be easier to prepare tofu well. Below, you’ll find my best tips and tricks for how to cook tofu like a pro, plus my go-to sriracha baked tofu recipe! What is tofu, anyway? Tofu is a soy-based food that’s made from curdling soy milk and forming it into a solid block. It’s a good source of plant-based protein that can…

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How to Cook Farro

Learn how to cook farro with this step-by-step guide! Plus, find my favorite farro recipes, along with more serving suggestions for this delicious grain.

Do you have a favorite whole grain? I love everything from millet to quinoa, but if I had to choose one, I think it would be farro. It’s hearty and wholesome, with an amazing chewy texture and nutty flavor. I enjoy it all year long, but it really becomes one of my kitchen staples in the fall. Its toasty flavor is delicious with fall produce like squash, apples, and kale, and cozy herbs like sage, rosemary, and thyme are its natural companions. If you’ve never tried it before, now is the perfect time – toss it into salads, add it…

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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.