A friend asked me to find her “a decent santoku knife that will not cost me an arm and a leg?  A knife that will do the job but not a knife that will impress knife lovers.”

A good, sharp chef’s knife is a kitchen essential, but it amazes me how many people don’t invest in their tools! If you are serious about cooking, you will save yourself so much time, energy, and frustration if you invest in a good knife. You don’t need an entire block of high-end knives. Ideally, you should have three: A 8-10” chef’s or santoku knife, a 5-10” serrated bread (or “utility”) knife, and a 3” paring knife. You can get away with just the chef’s or santoku knife, though.

So here are my...

If you’re a hippie-health type person, you probably already suffer through your daily dose of apple cider vinegar. If you’re a parent, you’ve probably tried unsuccessfully to make your gagging kiddos quaff it down as well.

Why?

Well, there’s this whole thing about your body’s pH level. You want it to be alkaline, because that’s correlated with better immune function and overall general health. (Low alkaline levels were connected to inflammatory bowel disease, in this study, and immune function was impaired by acid pH levels in this study.)

You can read a bigger overview of the “Whys” as well as a list of acid-forming and alkaline-forming foods right here.

Your body maintains a...

My friend, Ben, just moved to Brooklyn and is experiencing NYC sticker shock at the price of groceries. Ben is cooking for two “vegetarian-types” on a budget. Not only does he need to find cheap sources for quality food, he needs some recipes for the daily come-home-from-work-and-make-supper-every-day grind. He’s asked about what kind of staples (like beans) can be made easily from scratch to avoid the higher price of canned convenience.

I’ve been working on this post for a while now, and it’s started to get too unwieldy. I’m just going to toss it out there as a starting point for Ben, because at this point, he needs the information more than he needs it to be perfectly presented.

Here...

Anonymous writes:

Hey Laura, I want to impress my man with some meaty home cooking. Do you have a fantastic recipe that is relatively easy and inexpensive?

Oh, you are in luck, Anonymous! I just discovered the best recipe for making the most tender, flavorful flank steak strips you’ve ever feasted upon. I accidentally didn’t follow the recipe (what else is new?) and it turned out fine, so I’ll write down my adaptation here.

And, because I have a bad habit of not reading a recipe all the way through before I begin, only to find out there’s some crazy time constraint I didn’t know about that threatens to ruin my cooking plan…

First, note this! You need to start this at least 3-4 hours in...

Kristina writes:

I have gobs of fresh basil and parsley still going strong in my herb garden. But the weather is cooling down, and it won’t be long before I have to pick all of it, or lose it to frost. What’s the best way to preserve herbs so that I can use them in winter?

Lucky you and your abundance of basil! My favorite way to preserve basil is in the form of pesto, which freezes very nicely in ice cub trays.

Alternatively, you can just freeze an herb (whole leaves or chopped in ice cube trays), either by itself or immersed in olive oil (I did that with rosemary and it is a great soup starter)! Once they are frozen, take the blocks out and store them in a bag or jar in the freezer....Continue reading →

School has started, Fall has fallen, and it’s time to start preparing for the onslaught of annoying little illnesses that get passed around so easily. Pink-eye is one of the most popular, right?

I’m suuuuper susceptible to conjunctivitis. I had a raging, double-eye case of it when I was about 12 (after a week of sleep-away horse camp with no running water), and ever since, my body has leapt upon every chance to re-experience that hell. Any time my immune system is compromised, I have to be on the guard for a big flare up.

I’m also not a fan of antibiotics, as you know. The drops used to treat pink-eye are pretty benign, but why bother getting a prescription when you can use an extremely...

I wrote this initially as an email to a friend - a play-by-play of what was happening in the kitchen as my eldest daughter (our 2e child) was attempting to make herself a snack. This whole episode probably took 45 minutes. A task that typically takes less than a minute.
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Right now, I’m at my desk looking into the kitchen and I’m working with Sophia through the steps of making Banana Pudding.

[Basically: mash a banana up with peanut butter.]

She is having a really hard time with it. She is already in nearly-freakout mode this morning (I think triggered by disappointment over what she got for breakfast, and possibly a drop in blood sugar before she got calories into her; she’s...