Not your ordinary smoothie: highly nutritious fruit and vegetable smoothie

Leafy greens are amazing for you. From pregnant women to healthy adults and children, every time we turn around we seem to find another study touting their benefits. Women's Health Magazine recently reported, "A study in the journal Neurology reports that getting two-plus servings per day of veggies--especially leafy green ones like kale--slows cognitive decline by 40 percent."So if we know they

Chicago Food Blogs I Love

There is something great about regional food blogging communities. When I first started food blogging I was living in Chicago, and always envious of what seemed to be the very active food blogger communities in places like San Francisco. At the time it sometimes felt like I was one of the few food bloggers covering the large, diverse, and fantastic food scene that is Chicago.Now that I'm in

A Beginner's Guide to Minestrone Soup: How to Improvise Recipes

Minestrone has a certain kind of magic about it. Making it always makes me feel like I am channeling my imaginary inner Italian grandma. It is a very forgiving dish because you can put so many different things together, depending on what is conveniently at hand, and still wind up with something spectacular. And that is also its charm: when minestrone grows out of the joie de vivre of

Last chance for a great dinner on the cheap: My picks for Nashville's Restaurant Week

I love restaurant week. Its one of those great concepts that makes my life a better place. Restaurants offer special prix fixe menus for really great prices, and it entices me out to try new places that I might not otherwise have gone to. You get a top notch dinner for much much less than you would normally spend at that restaurant, and the restaurants get exposure and hope to entice you to

New Year's Eve Dinner

After an annoying delay at the airport (which was made tolerable only because my darling son decided to crawl around and befriend everyone rather than break down and cry), we finally made it home from our long holiday journeys. And it was delicious to be home. As the quiet of our baby sleeping descended on our house, my husband and I realized that we should probably plan a nice dinner for

Six Great Gift Ideas for Foodies, Food Bloggers & Kitchen Goddesses

From practical to whimsical, here are six thoughtful gifts sure to please the kitchen maven in your life.Jessie Steele Retro Aprons are bringing sexy back to the kitchen. I'm drooling over them all, so I can't decide if I like the Retro Cherries, Classy Black and White, or the Brown Polka Dot Apron. She even makes a Children's Apron.Will Write for Food: The Complete Guide to Writing Cookbooks,

7 Common Foods The Experts Avoid

You're food savvy. You've heard of the dirty dozen. You try to buy organic. Me too. The winter time is coming to most of us, so perhaps you've just cranked open a couple of cans of tomatoes, added some beef, and you have a pot of warm chili simmering on the stove. Maybe you are baking up some potatoes to go with it. While you wait you pop up some microwave popcorn and snuggle up to watch a movie.