Apple Cinnamon Breakfast Strata PLUS Whole Wheat Breadcrumbs

Today on Serious Eats: Cider-Poached Pears with Yogurt and Toasted Almonds. Elegant, light, fruity! (Note to self: When trying to psyche self up to blog, do not listen to Radiohead's OK Computer right before beginning to write. It's a bit like watching the first ten minutes of Up before playing in the Super Bowl.)(And yes, blogging is just like playing in the Super Bowl. Think of the carbs!)Hey you guys! So, we're trying something new here at CHG, in which we de-emphasize calorie counts a little (as they're not the decisive measure of a food's healthiness) so as to better focus on the overall nutritional value of any given recipe. (Did I just make that up just now, so this post would fit into our stated thematic parameters? Yes.) (Does it have...

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Posted in: Breakfast,Vegetarian

Veggie Might: French-Style Lentil Soup with Spinach

Written by the fabulous Leigh, Veggie Might is a weekly Thursday column about all things Vegetarian.A common misconception about vegetarians and vegans is that we only eat bland, boring lentil dishes that taste like paste/cardboard. Oh contraire! Lentils are freakin’ awesome, and you need not employ fancy tricks to make them delicious. How apropos that, this week, I turn to Mark Bittman to illustrate this fact. (Mr. B, I’m going to miss The Minimalist ever so.)Generally, my favorite way to eat lentils is all dal-ed up, Indian-style. But I’ll take them any way really: in a loaf, a patty, or in a soup with just a few simple flavors, like onions, salt, and pepper. The thing is, as comfortable as I am around beans and lentils, wildly tossing together...

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Posted in: Soups and Stocks,Vegan,Vegetarian,Veggie Might

Guest Post: Cranberry Pumpkin Muffins

Today's guest post comes from Ali, who lives in Vancou... you'll see. Hi everyone. My name is Ali, and I live in Vancouver, Canada with my boyfriend J. We are both graduate students, so we eat on the cheap, and we're both pretty active - I'm training up for a half marathon - so we're a couple of hungry buggers. The recipe below is a great way to use up pumpkin, if you've got it, and cranberries.This muffin is one of our faves: It's cheap and healthy and good (what a coincidence!), and also portable, freezable, and toastable. CHGPFT! Also, let's compare this nutritional info with the info for a "Lowfat raspberry muffin" from a large international coffee chain that shall remain nameless. Their muffin (according to their online nutrition...

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Posted in: Breads,Breakfast,Desserts and Snacks,Vegetarian

Green Kitchen: Roasted Leek and Mushroom Salad

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.In the three-and-a-half months my kitchen has been without gas, I’ve gotten creative. I’ve learned the moods of an electric cooktop. I’ve almost set my toaster oven on fire with parchment paper. I’ve microwaved a lot of tea. It’s been an adventure but I can’t say it’s been good, or easy, or fun.So when my boyfriend, working from home on Friday to let the utility guys into the apartment (and make sure the cat ever came out from under the bed), texted me that we had gas, I was EXCITED! All-caps EXCITED, here. Cookies! Cake! Roasted broccoli! I did not pass many waking hours this weekend without the oven...

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Posted in: Green Kitchen,Sides,Vegetarian

Ask the Internet: Upscale Slow Cooker Recipes?

Today's question comes from reader Marnie:Q: I have sort of the opposite question from the one posted [last week]. I have several different size slow cookers and a couple of slow cooker recipe books from which I’ve mostly pulled relatively bland recipes. My husband and I are on a tight budget and we like to use fresh whole foods whenever possible. We don’t ever keep canned soups in the house nor jars of salsa or other short cut ingredients that are frequent staples in slow cooker recipes. We love flavor and are happy with meaty or meat free recipes as long as they are not bland and boring. Any suggestions for great, flavorful and healthy recipes for the slow cooker that don’t use any short cuts?A: Marnie, I've heard nothing but good things...

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Posted in: Ask the Internet

Pasta e Fagioli, or: I Succesfully Rehydrate Dried Beans For the First Time, Ever

Up until last night, I've always used canned beans in recipes. I wish I could say it’s because they taste better. Or they’re cheaper. Or they come in prettier colors and sing me neat Pink Floyd songs as I go to sleep at night.Alas, that ain’t the truth. The truth is more like this: I have never been able to rehydrate dried beans. Ever. Like, in recorded history. Even before I was born, I couldn’t do it. No matter how long I soaked, no matter how many hours I boiled, my dried legumes always stayed dried. Like tiny, grainy BB gun pellets.Then, I stumbled over The Kitchn's One-Pot Pasta e Fagioli, which uses caramelized onions and a smattering of bacon to flavor a rich broth, in which dried cannellini beans, pasta, and spinach are then cooked...

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Posted in: Mains,Meat and Fish,Soups and Stocks

Saturday Throwback: Cheap Healthy Salad Dressings - 102 Recipes

Every Saturday, we post a piece from the CHG archives. This one came from April 2008. (See: The immediate Spring reference.) Ah, Spring - the birds are singing, the trees are budding, the construction next door has resumed, the writers’ strike is over, and last but not least, salad season is finally upon us. So gather ‘round, my leafy green-lovin’ compatriots, and let’s talk dressing.Much like marinades and mixes, making your own salad dressing is a frugal, delicious, and preservative-free exercise. The problem, alas, is the fat content, as homemade toppings generally contain a small tureen of olive oil. While the heart-healthy liquid can have enormous health benefits in moderation, let’s face it – sometimes you just want (need?) to pile the...

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Guest Post: Chocolate Granola

Jerimi Ann Walker a math professor living in the Chicago area and founder of Math Bootcamps. When not doing math, she enjoys trying to put new and hopefully healthier spins on common recipes.My husband and I love finding ways to satisfy our collective sweet tooth without eating food that's over-the-top sweet or too heavily processed. Last year, this lead us to experiment with recipes for different type of granola. Eventually, we decided that any old granola wouldn’t do. We had to find a recipe for chocolate granola. I mean, think about it - the best of all worlds! After a couple of duds (okay - way more than a couple of duds), we finally found a recipe that has become a staple of our household. Just a few simple and easy-to-find ingredients...

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Posted in: Breakfast,Desserts and Snacks,Vegetarian

Veggie Might: Baking and Cooking for the Sensitive and Cleansing

Penned by the effervescent Leigh, Veggie Might is a weekly Thursday column about the wide world of Vegetarianism.Cooking is an act of giving as much as survival. We eat to live, and those of us who love to cook, cook to love. Many people in my life have so-called restrictive diets—I say “so-called” because once you get used to a change in your eating habits, it doesn’t feel challenging anymore. As a 20-year vegetarian (in a few short months!), my diet is varied and imaginative. I ate a mostly meat and potatoes diet in my youth, and I’m a much more adventurous eater now. But I digress...Factoring in other food-related disorders, sensitivities, intolerances, and allergies, life can look pretty bleak at first glance. Change is scary, and adjusting...

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Posted in: Cooking,Health,Veggie Might

Guest Post: Cheap Healthy Carnivore

Alexandra is a Certified Personal Trainer and dancer-with-a-day-job who blogs about health, fitness, and ballroom dancing at Ombailamos. Once upon a time, cereal bowls and takeout menus were the most-used items in my kitchen. Then came a voluntary downsizing, followed by a layoff, followed by four months of unemployment. It is amazing how motivating a drastically-reduced income can be!From Flickr's procsilasMan, and woman, cannot live on bread alone. And for some of us, a pot of beans or lentils is not the protein we want to dish out after a hard day's work. There are some completely vegetarian dishes in rotation chez nous, but the go-to for me and my hardworking DH is a piece of meat, a side of vegetables, and a glass of wine.Now: how...

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Posted in: Cooking,Meat and Fish

Guest Post: Sauteed Shrimp and Asparagus with Sesame Seeds

Carrie Murphy studies poetry in the MFA program at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, NM. She blogs about eating well in graduate school at Master of Fine Eats.Being a strapped-for-time-and-energy graduate student, I am always looking for quick, easy and healthful dinner recipes I can make after a long day of class. Eating healthfully as often as possible is important to me, but so is relaxing (which, for the purposes of this post is defined as watching bad TV on Hulu and laying on my couch). So, how to eat well when I'm tired and don't feel like cooking?I came up with this fast little saute after reading this recipe and wanting something a little bit more substantial (apologies to Martha). I had half a bag of frozen shrimp and some...

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Posted in: Mains,Meat and Fish

Ask the Internet: Easy Slow Cooker Recipes

Today's question comes from reader Tanya:Q: I would like some slow cooker recipes where I can just dump canned or frozen foods into the slow cooker, turn it on, and walk out the door. No slicing, dicing or browning. I would like them to be healthy and mostly vegetarian. And, oh yeah, I am sick sick sick of chili! I am looking for these to save me from going out to eat. I would rather pay a little bit more for the price of pre-chopped veggies than the price of dining out. A: Tanya, I'm happy to introduce you to A Year of Slow Cooking, Stephanie O'Dea's extensive blog dedicated exclusively to simple crockpot recipes. She also has two cookbooks out, including More Make It Fast, Cook It Slow, which was just released in December.Phyllis Pellman...

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Posted in: Ask the Internet