If you or someone you know is about to graduate from college, then it's time to move on from the days of dorm food, meal plans, and affordable campus eateries and get cooking instead. Should the kitchen be somewhat of a foreign place, fear not. Start with basic (but delicious) recipes and meals and work your way up to more complicated adaptations. Here are 10 tasty and essential recipes to start your culinary education.
Make this Mother's Day memorable and delicious with an impressive brunch spread. Don't hold back here — more is more when it comes to brunch. We've got an idea for a tasty menu that will make any mom feel so loved . . . and full.
Daytime Drinks
Mimosas or Bloody Marys? Who says you have to choose? Have a wonderfully boozy start to the day (which will probably be followed by an afternoon nap) with fresh grapefruit mimosas and classic Bloody Marys to choose from.
Sweet and Savory Main Courses
An uncomplicated and filling frittata is a great way to serve eggs to a crowd. This savory recipe is chock full of veggies and it's easily adaptable to fit your taste preferences. For a sweeter counterpart, cook up a fluffy french toast strata with chicken sausage. Make life easier on yourself and put this together the night before, so you can just wake up and stick it in the oven.
A Hashed-Out Side Dish
Sweet potato hash browns are easy to put together and are especially delicious doused in your favorite hot sauce. This side dish complements the sweet and savory items of the brunch spread perfectly.
Seasonal Fruit Salad
For some freshness, grab your favorite fruit and throw together a fresh fruit salad. A rich meal like this benefits from a crisp and juicy component.
Chocolate-Covered Ending
Finally, because your mom is totally worth it, make a bunch of chocolate-covered strawberries to finish the meal that will show her just how much you love her.
What are you cooking or eating this Mother's Day?
A cake topper is a great place to get a little bit playful when planning a wedding. We scoured the pages of Etsy and handpicked 27 of our favorite finds, from classically beautiful to some very unique options (fiddlehead fern cake topper, anyone?). Click through for some wedding cake inspiration!
April may be almost over, but we have a funny feeling that we haven't seen the last of those pesky Spring showers. Don't let the rain get you down; instead, channel all of that energy into some culinary projects and challenges. We've got eight ideas for recipes to make while it's coming down outside. Some of them may take a bit of extra effort, but it will be worth it when you can cuddle up in front of a good movie with some delicious eats while you wait for the sun to come out again.
Earth Day is today, and it always serves as a good reminder to rethink our eating habits and cooking practices. There are so many small changes that we all can make in our everyday lives that, over time, significantly impact the world that we live in. While we may not be able to implement all of these changes all of the time, it is important to consider how our actions affect the bigger picture. Find out how you can make a difference when you keep reading.
The theme of the past week has been color. So it seems fitting to plan a week full of bright and enticing meals. These five dishes bring a whole lot of color and flavor to the table. Click through to plan your weeknight meals.
Now that we've taken a tour of the produce section, color by color, we're so inspired to make meals that use all of these fresh, flavorful ingredients. But before we do, we want to take one more moment to admire all of the gorgeous edible colors.
Purple fruits and vegetable are like works of art, yet shockingly abundant in the produce aisle. For our exploration through the colors of the fruit and vegetable rainbow, we were able to track down a bright-purple head of cabbage, a box of blueberries, an elegant, long-necked Japanese eggplant, and a peak-season bunch of Spring onions. Looking for ways to enjoy these purple produce items? Then keep reading.
Crisp green produce just looks like it's good for you, doesn't it? Out of all of the colors of the rainbow, I tend to prefer green veggies the most. While there are countless fresh and tasty options, at this time of year, it's hard not to be drawn to avocados, artichokes, english peas, and lettuce. Find out what we like to do with these bright green ingredients when you keep reading.
We're moving on to the yellow produce part of our journey. When I think of yellow fruits and vegetables, I immediately taste lemons. But beyond lemons, crookneck squash happens to be one of my favorite vegetables to cook with. Golden delicious apples are often overlooked for fancier varieties, even though they boast a unique and refreshing flavor. And yes, you guessed it, we're looking at more bell peppers! For some colorful recipes using all of these yellow ingredients, keep reading.
Produce in vivid red hues might seem hard to come by, but interesting enough, in our colorful produce tour, orange produce was even harder to track down. As it turns out, the options are pretty straightforward — oranges, carrots, and golden bell peppers — but that doesn't make them any less full of flavor. Find out what to do with them when you keep reading.
The first stop on our colorful tour of produce is the red section. Specifically, beets, red bell peppers, and radishes stood out on the grocery shelves. Find out our favorite ways to use these red ingredients when you read on!
In honor of Earth Day (next Monday, April 22), we want to take this week to appreciate all of the colorful, nutritious, flavorful produce that we get to enjoy. With that in mind, we scoured the shelves of our local Whole Foods Market for the most colorful ingredients, from bright red bell peppers to deep purple cabbage. We're going to be taking a look at all of the colors of the produce rainbow and chatting about our favorite ways to enjoy them. Keep checking all week long for lots of colorful culinary inspiration.
Who's excited about the return of Mad Men on Sunday? We are! Kick off season six in style with an intimate viewing party. Invite family and friends over for an evening that will take everyone back to the early '60s. Serve up old-fashioned eats and play music from the era like Ella Fitzgerald and Etta James. Ask that women dress up like Joan or Betty, and that the men wear suits and hats or sweater vests.
Retro Cocktails
Pick classic cocktails from the Mad Men era like an old fashioned, Campari with a twist, or a gimlet to serve up all night long.
Updated Appetizers
Serve updated versions of more traditional eats. Start with marinated olives to go with your first round of drinks. Then bring out shrimp cocktail with three dipping sauces: cocktail sauce, peanut sauce, and barbecue sauce.
Steakhouse Favorites
A crisp and classic wedge salad is a perfect first course. Follow that up with a hearty meal of New York strip steak and potato gratin.
Chocolate Fondue
Retreat to the couch to watch the premiere and set up a chocolate fondue spread on the coffee table, complete with fresh fruit and marshmallows. After dessert, break out your tumblers and your favorite whiskey (we suggest Redbreast Irish whiskey) and toast to a successful '60s premiere party.
How do you plan to celebrate the return of Mad Men?
— Additional reporting by Anna Monette Roberts
Now that Easter's over, you may find yourself drowning in too much leftover candy. Let's face it: Peeps — those sugar-coated, adorable animal marshmallows — are easy to get carried away with. The good news? People love to make creative things with them as much as they enjoy eating them! We've searched the Internet for the coolest ways to use Peeps and rounded them up here. From Peeps sushi to Peeps brownies, keep reading to see the most interesting ways to make use of this springtime candy.
What better way to celebrate Spring than with a week full of meals packed with the season's best foods? Thanks to the warmer weather, chances are you'll be spending more time outdoors and less time inside cooking. That's why we've rounded up five meals that are super fast and easy so you can enjoy the sunny skies now that they're here.
— Additional reporting by Lisette Mejia
Easter is just three days away, but if you still find yourself looking for some colorful inspiration for your table, you've come to the right place. We've been covering the holiday all week with fast and easy ideas for what to serve, how to decorate, and what to sip on, all of which come together in no time. Click through to find all of our ideas plus more!
In addition to Pi Day, March 14 also happens to be National Potato Chip Day. While it's easy and satisfying to eat them right out of the bag, it's even more fun to come up with creative ways to add some crunch factor to your food. There's no doubt about it that potato chips are dangerously addictive on their own, but incorporated into other dishes, like sandwiches or even baked goods, they reach an entirely new level of awesome. So grab your favorite bag of chips and get creative!
What do you love to add potato chips to?
It's Pi Day, and the obvious way to celebrate would be to bake up a sweet pie of your liking and devour away. But we like to think outside the box. We also really like pizza. Today, we think you should celebrate 3/14 with a savory pizza pie, so we've rounded up some of our favorite recipes for you. From a St. Patrick's Day corned beef and cabbage pizza to Wolfgang Puck's smoked salmon pizza, click through to find a pie that will tickle your taste buds.
If you're looking to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a big traditional Irish corned beef and cabbage feast, there's just one problem. As it turns out, corned beef and cabbage is not actually a traditional Irish dish. The meal features salt-cured beef, which gets its name from the large "kernels" of salt that covers it during its curing process. But beef was rare and incredibly expensive in Ireland, hardly something that farmers would readily have access to. It was more likely that these boiled dinners would feature some kind of bacon cooked with cabbage.
When the Irish immigrated to the United States, beef was more available and certainly more affordable, and corned beef in particular became an important part of the culture, as it took the place of bacon in the boiled meal. So don't feel disheartened if you had planned to enjoy a boiled dinner of corned beef and cabbage on Sunday, because not only is it a part of the Irish-American St. Patrick's Day tradition, but it's also wholesome and full of slow-cooked flavor.
If you want something a little more creative, enjoy your corned beef on pizza or in a grilled cheese.
