Category: Mains

  • When the weather starts to turn toward summer (finally!), we gravitate toward salads for our main course. Tonight, I assembled Lidey Heuk‘s Orzo Salad which, by-the-way, makes a ton so would be a good candidate for bringing to a summer gathering. The addition of fresh herbs – I used a combination of mint and parsley…

  • I’ve never regretted, not for one second, cooking a recipe developed by Ali Slagle, a contributor to the New York Times Cooking section AND cookbook author (I Dream of Dinner). At the minimum, you should become a subscriber to her substack, 40 Ingredients Forever. It’s asparagus season and because asparagus looks so tempting right now,…

  • When we were kids, my sisters and I were given a copy of Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys and Girls. My memory which is possibly faulty is that our version had a spiral spine. Professional! Sometimes I wish I knew where that tome went, I’m sure it would be chockfull of classics from our growing…

  • Whenever I see a recipe in the New York Times that has been developed by Ali Slagle, I know it will be stellar – easy to cook and delicious. This offering contributed by Ali to the New York Times Cooking Section last March is that and then some. This recipe is gifted from my subscription…

  • What says I grew up in the 1960s more than a Sloppy Joe dinner? This recipe comes from my Mom’s recipe collection, although the ingredient list calling for Hunt’s tomato sauce seems to hint of at the origins. Feel free to substitute lower fat meat options like turkey or experiment with meatless proteins. The secret…

  • My sister Molly, a terrific cook, adapted this recipe from a Cooking Light offering (March 2010), and it is really a delicious and quick pasta meal that includes veggies. Always a good idea to add veg to pasta. For this iteration, we used Casarecce pasta, pasta that originated in Sicily. Tossing the pasta in a…

  • This is another delightful main from cookbook author and regular New York Times contributor, Yasmin Fahr. I’ll gift and link to the recipe, originally published in the Times here, but Yasmin Fahr also cross-posts links on her website. As I recently discovered, gifted NY Times recipes are available for a month, so if you are…

  • This family recipe reminds me of colder weather: crisp Fall nights, frozen winters, and meatloaf with a baked potato. If our collective memory serves, this recipe came from the Quaker Oats container. While it can be made into individual loaves, which was probably the height of elegance for me, more often than not, one big…

  • Growing up, I’m not so sure I was as big a fan of beets as has been the case in my adulthood. Maybe it was because my Dad wasn’t a fan, and we didn’t eat them very often. With kid logic, my siblings and I often joked that we might “hide beets in Dad’s mashed…

  • While it would be easy to claim it is too hot to cook today, my better angels took over the decision-making for meal prep. This recipe was part of the plan on food shopping day and with some beautiful looking fresh ingredients waiting to be put to use, how could I resist? Yasmin Fahr, who…