Arugula Salad with Lemon & Fennel

This easy arugula salad is light and lemony with peppery arugula, marinated fennel, crisp radishes, creamy avocado, and toasted walnuts.

This bright arugula salad is one of my favorite simple side dishes. It’s so easy to toss together: marinate thinly shaved fennel and radishes for a few minutes before tossing them with arugula, toasted walnuts, and creamy avocado. And if you have it on hand, a dollop of pesto really takes it to the next level. With a simple lemon dressing, this salad has the perfect balance of creamy, crunchy, bright, and bitter components. It’s an excellent choice for a weeknight, but it’s good enough to serve as a side salad for a special occasion. Arugula Salad Recipe Variations Like…

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Simple Sweet Potato Bowl

Meet one of my favorite combos: sweet potatoes + feta. In this recipe, they're the perfect hearty, tangy topping for grains, greens, and nuts.

This easy bowl is what I make for dinner most often when no one is looking. It’s my go-to meal when I’m not working on new recipes, when I’m tired after a long day, and when I’ve definitely had too much take-out pho for one week. It’s not a 30-minute meal because roasting a sweet potato takes at least that long, but the rest is so darn simple. Plus, nothing actually calms me more than the wafting aroma of sweet potatoes roasting in my kitchen. There’s no fancy sauce in this recipe. You won’t even dirty an extra bowl to…

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Super Stuffed Chipotle Sweet Potatoes

A good stuffed sweet potato starts with the "stuff," and this fresh corn, black bean & red cabbage filling makes these guys totally irresistible.

I’m slowly becoming a baked potato lover, but not just any baked potato lover. I still can’t get behind white baked potatoes slathered with sour cream and butter, but I could eat these mega stuffed sweet potatoes for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Case in point, as I started writing this post, I went and polished off the leftovers I was saving for my lunch… for breakfast. I’m telling you, I have no self-control sometimes. A good stuffed sweet potato, of course, starts with the “stuff.” I made my filling by mixing black beans with corn, Cotija cheese, avocado, jalapeño, and generous squeezes of…

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Tahini Noodle Salad with Carrots & Chickpeas

This healthy noodle salad is one of my favorite lunch recipes. Tossed in a tangy, nutty sauce, it's filled with crispy chickpeas & lots of veggies.

Today, I’m taking a break from soup season (although I do have some good ones in the works!), because it’s been about 95 degrees lately and a big, cold noodle salad just sounded good to me. This bowl is full of whole grain noodles and crunchy veggies that are all tossed in a deliciously creamy, nutty tahini sauce. In an effort to feel some “fall spirit,” I roasted chickpeas and carrots and tossed those in too. Cooked carrots haven’t always been our thing – the trick is to roast them until they’re slightly tender but still have some bite (just don’t let them get mushy!). If…

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Chipotle Apple Sweet Potato Salad

Chipotle Apple Sweet Potato Salad - an easy fall favorite. This sweet & spicy salad is SO filling with apples, corn, roasted tomatoes, and chipotle.

This is my new favorite salad… and I don’t throw words like “favorite” or “best ever” around lightly. You may have noticed that I love roasted sweet potatoes in just about any salad (as evident here, here, and here) but this combination – with roasted tomatoes, roasted apples, corn, and a tangy/smoky chipotle dressing – was so good that I made it for dinner two nights in a row. The first night, I made this as a lazy-girl dinner. Jack was out of town so for an easy “by myself” dinner I decided to roast the things (pictured above) that had just arrived in my Farmhouse Delivery…

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Summer Panzanella with Squash

Though pattypan squash is my top choice, you can use any summer squash you have on hand to make this bright, bold late summer panzanella.

Hold your pumpkin bread – I have one last super summery recipe before this season really ends. You can use any summer squash you like here (zucchini or yellow squash are both great), but I found pattypan squash at the farmers market and had to try it! I considered making a totally different pattypan squash recipe by stuffing and baking it, but I didn’t want to turn the oven on. Then I noticed that I had some really stale bread, so this hearty, delicious pattypan squash panzanella was an obvious choice. I’m a HUGE fan of panzanellas, or Italian bread salads (see…

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Quinoa Veggie Wrap

A veggie wrap is the epitome of flavor + convenience. These pesto & quinoa salad-stuffed veggie wraps are bright, fresh & perfect for taking on the go.

In my opinion, the world cannot have too many quinoa salads. Don’t get me wrong, I love the other grains too – farro, millet, and wheatberries are all lovely – but my real go-to grain is quinoa. I love to make a big batch and keep it on hand, as it’s the perfect catch-all for the vegetables, nuts, and cheeses that I usually have around. Of course, since this salad was destined for a picnic without any silverware, I decided to have my cake (salad?) and eat it too by stuffing it in a veggie wrap. My Veggie Wrap Filling The hearty, fresh…

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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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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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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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Watermelon Feta Salad with Kale & Avocado

Nothing beats this cooling watermelon feta salad in the summertime. With a bright dressing & lots of crisp veggies, it's a yummy, refreshing lunch.

I love kale, and I love summer… therefore this might be my perfect salad. The temps aren’t too high here just yet but with all of the crazy rain we’ve been having, the humidity makes it sweltering to say the least. This watermelon feta salad is as refreshing as it gets – cool, crisp watermelon, fennel, and cucumber are mixed with creamy avocado and feta cheese. It’s pretty much everything I love tossed into a bowl. This is a greener version of this spicy watermelon salad that I love. The kale idea came from a salad that I regularly get at Snap Kitchen, a…

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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.