Savvy Eats

Tomorrow, I’ll turn 26. My twenty-fifth year was interesting one. While I was often sick, plagued by headaches and nausea, the year was still overall positive. We took some big trips: a 10-day jaunt to Oregon and Washington, a fun yet exhausting weekend in Massachusetts for the Healthy Living Summit. I made a short visit [...]

If you’re going to make maple cream, don’t do what I did: do not take a Pilates class that is heavy on the upper-body work mere hours before you make this confection.  And if you do, opt for the electric mixer method, rather than attempting to hand-stir.  Your arms and shoulders will thank you. I [...]

The Taste of Madison was held the weekend before classes started my sophomore year of college. In a desire to escape the endless “welcome, freshmen” activities at the dorms, I rounded up my roommate Nicole, boyfriend Dan and classmate Cordelia. I preferred the idea of tasting dishes from restaurants around the city than watching all [...]

I find my recipe inspiration everywhere.  A magazine mentions a hard cider sangria, which I spin off into a fall fruit sangria.  A friend raves about the creamy tomato soup she made last weekend, inspiring me to turn my leftovers into a soup. We have vegetables sautéed in brown butter with pecans and Romano cheese at a restaurant, [...]

These are my recent autumn obsessions: 1. Plum colored nails.  This summer I was all about the bright orange nails, but now I’m adoring dark purple.  I used recessionista by essie. 2. Anti-gravity Pilates, which is basically Pilates using a big, suspended-from-the-ceiling hammock.  It is so challenging and so fun…and the inversion always gets rid [...]

I’ll admit it: I’m afraid of baking layer cakes.  My decorating skills are lacking, and though I am a trained scientist, in the science of layer cakes I seem doomed to uneven layers and fillings that weep and ooze.  I hate the feeling of failure, so I typically just avoid baking layer cakes at all [...]

When you make a fennel blood orange salad, or otherwise eat oranges, don’t toss the peels. Instead, refrigerate them until you have the peels of 4-5 oranges.  Candy them and dip them in rich dark chocolate for a sweet dessert. I used this recipe with the peels of four blood oranges.  Blanching the peels three [...]

My first encounter with crepes was 9th grade French class.  We ate them with some butter and powdered sugar, then with some Nutella, identifying each flavor an ingredient en français.  I was in heaven. In high school, my friends and I would have “crepes party,” making plates stacked high with paper-thin crepes to fill with [...]