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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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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Mango Ginger Rice Bowl

This rice bowl is one of our go-to meals when we're craving something light. It's easy to make, and mango, ginger & basil make it wonderfully refreshing.

Welcome to another meal planning week! About a month ago, I wrote a 5-part series that was all about my basic approach to meal planning. This was the plan: I started the week with a set amount of groceries and ideas for 5 meals, each meal utilizing the ingredients from the day before. The “plan” was not set in stone, so that my dinners would be somewhat flexible if I got a new idea mid-way through the week. If you missed that series, check it out here 🙂 After getting such a wonderful response to that series, I thought, let’s…

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Strawberry Rhubarb Chia Overnight Oat Parfaits

This yummy parfait is one of my favorite strawberry rhubarb recipes. I dollop a simple jam over oats with granola & lightly sweet coconut cream.

Back when we lived in Austin, rhubarb season existed to me only via Instagram. Rhubarb didn’t grow where we lived, and I didn’t quite understand why there was a sudden explosion of rhubarb recipes all over the internet every spring… until now. After the longest winter ever, our farmers markets are open again(!) and the first types of produce to appear have been asparagus, rhubarb, and… cheese. Yes – I think cheese is considered a vegetable here in the Midwest. One of My Favorite Rhubarb Recipes So far, I’ve only used rhubarb to make crisps, crumbles, and this strawberry rhubarb…

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Grilled Potato Salad with Scallion Vinaigrette

This is not your average potato salad recipe! Grilled potatoes, grilled scallions & grilled blueberries make a fresh & flavorful summer side.

Happy Sunday! If you need one more recipe idea to make for your weekend celebrations, give this grilled potato salad a try! When I say the words “potato salad,” my mind can only think of the kind that is laden with mayonnaise… which, admittedly, I will eat and enjoy once in a blue moon, but I love this one SO much more. By using par-boiled and then grilled potatoes, you get to taste the wonderful char-ry taste of the actual potato and not just a bunch of mayo. Punch Up Your Grilled Potatoes with a Scallion Vinaigrette! And speaking of…

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Grilled Avocado with Veggie Ceviche

If you've never tried grilled avocado, break out the grill ASAP! Tart veggie ceviche over lightly charred, creamy avocado is a delicious grilling side.

Grilling week continues! For the 3 recipes I’m sharing this week (the first was a grilled asparagus recipe if you missed it), I really wanted to choose produce that’s less commonly grilled. We’ll have all summer to grill my favorite staples like peppers, zucchini, and eggplant. I’ve never grilled avocado, so I thought “ooh, that’ll be fun!” It was fun, we loved it, and so will you: How to Make This Grilled Avocado Recipe Start by making the veggie ceviche filling with hearts of palm (they have a fish-like texture), tomato, serrano pepper, cilantro, and diced red onion for crunch. Toss…

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Farro Salad with Grilled Asparagus

Make this beautiful grilled asparagus recipe for your next cookout! With pea shoots, radishes & lemon thyme dressing, it's practically spring on a plate.

Welcome to grilling week! This week, each of the 3 recipes I’m going to post will all involve the grill. The sun is finally shining and we’re getting ready for Memorial Day weekend, so what better time to cook outside? Of course if you don’t have an outdoor grill, you can always use a cast iron grill pan on the stove top. We’re starting this series with one of my favorite things to grill – asparagus! The key to great grilled asparagus is finding really fresh thin spears of asparagus. I like fat spears for ribboning, but thin spears are…

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Asparagus Ribbon, Mint & Pea Pesto Toasts

Have you ever tried peeling asparagus into ribbons? Lightly crisp, fresh & delicious, they're just the thing to top these yummy spring-themed toasts.

If you love asparagus, but the people you’re living with don’t, this post is for you. Even if you’re just blasé about asparagus, like I used to be, give it a chance by ribboning it! The thin, raw ribbons tossed with olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper are so fresh and delicious that you’ll completely avoid the unpleasant fibrous, stringy experience that asparagus sometimes causes. You can toss them in salads, put them on pizza… last weekend we ate them on fancy toast because these happened to be the ingredients that I had on hand. To make the ribbons, you…

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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.