Eggplant and Roasted Tomato Salad

A trip to Italy inspired this delicious, 10-ingredient salad recipe. Packed with roasted tomatoes, eggplant, and basil, it's a perfect summer dish.

I keep a food journal when we travel. It’s nothing fancy, just a little book that isn’t my iPhone. There are no pictures or charming doodles… there aren’t really even sentences, just scribbles of ingredients and descriptions of what we ate and where. Some dishes, I’ll try to recreate at home, but not all of them. The chosen few that make it into my kitchen come down to a few criteria: how badly I crave something, the ability to decipher my chicken-scratch handwriting, and the availability of similar ingredients. This eggplant and tomato salad (a take-away lunch I ate one day at Roscioli) easily checked all…

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Cinnamon Quinoa Breakfast Bowl

Jumpstart your day with this Cinnamon Quinoa Breakfast Bowl! With fresh fruit, toasted nuts, and warm spices, it's refreshing, healthy, and satisfying.

If you saw what I eat for breakfast every day, you would be so bored. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my daily eggs & avocado, but lately I’ve been trying to switch things up just because I think change is good every once in a while. Especially if that change means another excuse to smother things in peaches. This quinoa breakfast bowl is inspired by the beautiful bowls of oatmeal that I see all over the internet. You know the ones – they’re chock full of colorful fruit and other various superfoods. They’re so pretty that they make me wish I…

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Curried Chickpea Salad Sliders

Three things I am obsessed with: chickpeas, avocado, and all things MINI… mini pizzas, mini tacos, mini pies, mini skillets. I had these cute little pretzel buns last week so that’s how this recipe started. (Although you could use any kind of bun or sliced bread for this recipe). I first thought of making little veggie burgers, but since it’s a whopping 103 degrees(!) outside, I’ve been trying to use my oven as little as possible. Plus this chickpea salad is fast, easy, and cold, which is everything I want in a summer recipe. These would be perfect for a summer picnic except, well, it’s…

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Peach, Basil & Radicchio Salad

So… it turns out that it actually is possible to have too much gelato. It’s also possible to have too much burrata, too much bread, and too much pasta… Normally, my matcha and kale-loving self would say that these truths are obvious – but when in Rome… well, you know the rest. We created this post on the day of the vacation when I needed salad most. Not that it’s hard to find good salads in Rome, but we enjoyed spending our early evenings on this terrace of the Airbnb apartment where we were staying. Earlier that morning, we picked up a…

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Smoky Sweet Corn Tostadas

Make this easy vegan tostada recipe for a smoky, fun & fresh summer lunch. If you have leftover hummus, store it in the fridge for a quick, healthy snack!

Happy August! I hope corn is in season where you are, because I have a pretty corny tostada recipe today. Let’s just say that I decided to go for the corn trifecta. I started by making some sweet and smoky corn hummus that is a great snack on its own. Then I slathered it onto crispy (baked) corn tortillas. Finally, I topped these with avocado and MORE grilled corn because, well, I was up to my ears in fresh summer corn, and I had to use it somehow. After spending the month of July eating pasta, I feel like a I needed a Texas re-tox.…

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Peach & Plum Crumble

When peaches are in season, there's nothing I crave more than this peach crisp. Nutty, oaty, juicy & sweet, it's easy to make & absolutely delicious.

This may be sacrilege, but over the years, I’ve become less and less interested in chocolate desserts and more and more obsessed with fruit ones. And right now, fruit crisps – like this peach crisp recipe – are my absolute favorites. They’re SO easy to throw together, they let seasonal produce shine, and to me, there’s nothing more delicious than a nutty, oaty crumble with juicy baked fruit and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Peach Crisp Recipe Ingredients Now that peaches are in peak season, this peach crisp has been on repeat in our house. At this time of…

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Summer Squash Vegetable Pizza

Our vacation is coming to a close and while we’ve eaten well in Italy, we’ve eaten just a little too well. I’m feeling pretty ready to go home and get back to my many-vegetable way of eating. But before we go to salad town, I thought I’d share this pile-of-vegetable pizza recipe that I made before we left. Usually my opinion about pizza is “less is more,” but I had a fridge to clean out. The crust here is made with part white whole wheat flour, but if you can use all whole wheat or all all-purpose flour if you prefer. Or skip the…

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Cucumber Apple Green Gazpacho

Soup is my favorite thing to make regardless of the season – it’s comfy and cozy in the fall and winter, but just because it’s 100 degrees outside now doesn’t mean I don’t crave soup in the summer. Enter: gazpacho. This one is extra healthy (and bikini-season-friendly) because it’s made with green juice as the base. Since working on these recipes, with Evolution Fresh, I’ve been inspired to incorporate more green juices into my cooking. I got this idea by reading the ingredient list for their Sweet Greens and Ginger cold-pressed juice. It’s full of cucumber, apple, and ginger (among other greens), and sounded like the…

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Erin’s Adobo Eggplant Quesadillas

Ciao from Italia! At the moment, our life is all about pizza, pasta and tomatoes. It’s amazing but every time I travel, the things I miss most are tacos and mexican-ish food. We made these quesadillas a few weeks ago but I could totally go for one right now! I often get questions about how to cook eggplant. My favorite and most foolproof method for non-spongy eggplant is to grill it. (If you don’t have an outdoor grill, you can use a grill pan on your stove). I grill mine simply with olive oil, salt and pepper, and a squeeze of lemon or drizzle…

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Almond Milk Cold Brew Coffee Latte

Homemade cold brew is easy to make yourself. Freeze it into convenient ice cubes that you can drop into your iced coffee or almond milk latte!

To say that we’re obsessed with cold brew coffee is an understatement. It’s the only coffee we drink at home now – the only reason we still own a coffee maker (which is now stored up on the highest shelf) is for when parents come to visit. I didn’t know it was possible to make cold brew yourself, but it’s more than possible, it’s easy. I’ve been buying my cold brew by the bottle, but when I started seeing homemade versions all over the internet (here, here, here, here), I was intrigued. But let’s back up – what is cold brew coffee…

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Peach & Plum Caprese Salad

First, thank you all SO much for your Italy foodie suggestions, the other day! They are all so so helpful. I’m writing this from the terrace of our small, yet very awesome, airbnb apartment in Rome. It’s picturesque, I’m not going to lie. What’s less idyllic is this jet lag. I always expect it to get easier, but every trip it seems to hurt a little more… of course, nothing I’m sure a little gelato won’t fix. Before we head out for the day, I wanted to share this simple peach salad I made a few weeks ago with the sweetest Texas peaches &…

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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.