Enormous juicy tomatoes from the farmer's market, balsamic onion spread, fresh mozzarella, basil from our garden, topped with a little olive oil and salt, all laid out on crusty bread and placed in the panini press until everything is warm and the cheese is gooey? Yes, please. This might be the best lunch ever. It just tastes like summer with...

It probably would have been easier to just walk to Panera Bread to get my broccoli and cheese soup fix, but there's definitely a feeling of satisfaction I got by making my own soup that I wouldn't have been able to experience by ordering my soup at a counter. Bonuses: I have lunch for the rest of the week and I can make it healthier. While...

These white bean enchiladas from Cooking Light magazine many moons ago are one of the recipes that Dustin and I have been making since we first started cooking together back in Houston. They taste just like creamy cheese enchiladas after you puree all of the ingredients together, but they are a lot healthier because the white beans have fiber...

Dustin and I have discovered our Italian gene. We made homemade pasta with our new pasta maker (another wedding gift!) for the first time, and it came out perfectly! We were bracing ourselves for disaster after our gnocchi fail, but we needn't worry because this pasta was delicious. Unfortunately, making pasta at home is not an every night kind...

This recipe for creamy goat cheese mac and cheese has been in my recipe queue for months, but I've been toying around with exactly how I wanted to make it. Do I want to follow the recipe exactly or do I want to try to healthify it? Goat cheese is actually a relatively healthy cheese and is so creamy that I knew it would make a fantastic cheese...

Dustin and I ate pretty badly in Jamaica. We ate a lot, and we ate bad foods. When we got back home we actually decided to stick to a (mostly) vegetarian diet for a week because 1) it's healthier and 2) to experiment more with things other than meat. The exception to our vegetarian diet came when our neighbor grilled us big, juicy steaks one...

We finally had ONE day of nice, spring-like weather before the cold and rain came back, so Dustin and I jumped at the chance to have dinner outside on our patio and long for the warmer days ahead. Awhile ago I had seen a recipe for quesadillas with artichokes and pesto, which sounded good, but I had the idea to make a pesto with...

There is no way I can have leftover Beecher's cheese in the house without making a grilled cheese sandwich. The Beecher's store at Pike's Place Market makes amazing grilled cheese sandwiches, and one week when Dustin and I hit up John Howie Steak for lunch I saw a caramelized onion and Beecher's grilled sandwich on the menu that inspired my...

Well, making homemade gnocchi was an adventure to say the least. In the end, it didn't look too pretty, but it did taste good. We set out to make our gnocchi dough late one night with the intention of refrigerating it and making it the next night. We began by reading this article entitled "How to Make Gnocchi Like an Italian Grandmother," which...

Dustin and I loved to hit up the slider joint, Little Bigs, while we were back at Rice. We'd walk to the location (while it was open) by the zoo in Hermann Park, and I'd order a couple of black bean sliders with harissa cream while Dustin stuck with the traditional burgers. I used to not usually be the one to pick a veggie burger over freshly...