Author Archives: Lia Huber

Our Nourishing Pick of July 4th Recipes

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We’ve put together a nourishing plate for you with these July 4th recipes. All your favorite barbecue food–potato salad, baked beans, tomato salad … even pickles and ice cream–along with one of our best BBQ recipes (try Lia’s Best Barbecue Ribs). Happy July 4th from NOURISH Evolution!

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Getting into the right mindset: The July 4th is a celebration, and some of these dishes are heftier than everyday fare. But not to worry–it’s a good, healthy thing to enjoy a celebratory meal once in a while. Here’s our plan for how to load your plate so you don’t feel stuffed: Pile up with the tomato salad and cucumbers (the lightest picks of the bunch); enjoy a dollop of beans and potato salad and few heavenly bites of corn bread (a good bit heavier) with a few barbecue ribs (a little goes a long way) in which you take unbridled pleasure. Then finish with a bowl of cool, refreshing sherbet — all part of our nourishing collection of July 4th recipes.

Lia’s Best Barbecue Ribs Recipe

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A pressure cooker makes this sublimely tender, shot-through-with-flavor-to-the-bone barbecue ribs recipe possible in under an hour using the same technique as our Last-Minute Corned Beef From Scratch. Given their quick and easy nature, and the proliferation of really good bottled barbecue sauces out there, I opted not to take the extra step of making a sauce from scratch. When choosing your sauce, look for as few ingredients as possible (ideally all “real” words) with real sugar or honey or molasses or maple syrup as a sweetener, rather than high fructose corn syrup.

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Tomato Salad with Green Beans, Corn and Bulgur

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This tomato salad is the perfect fresh-from-the-garden all-purpose summer side dish for the season. It’s bursting with green beans, tomatoes, corn and cucumbers, with toothsome bulgur adding just a touch of heft (and healthy whole grain) while soaking up the tangy dressing.

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Tangy Smashed Potato Salad with Goat Cheese

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This potato salad recipe is a bit like a Nourishified stuffed potato. It’s got all the fixins you love — sour cream, bacon, chives, and even goat cheese — but in proportions that amp up flavor without making you feel like you just ate a house. Take it to your Fourth of July picnic, or serve it with barbecued ribs and Slow Cooked Molasses-Honey Baked Beans.

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Fregola Salad with White Beans and Arugula

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Fregola is an Italian rolled pasta similar to Israeli couscous, and it’s wonderfully toothsome in this summer salad. Think of it as a new twist on old-school pasta salad. If you can’t find fregola (or wanted to go gluten free), millet would be a great substitute. Top with a few chunks of good quality tuna packed in olive oil (unless you want to keep it vegan) and you’ve got a nice, hearty, nourishing meal.

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Fudgy Black Bean Brownies with Sea Salt

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I love these fudgy, black bean brownies, which I originally found here on Minimalist Baker, for many reasons. For one, all you do is blam a few ingredients in the food processor, spoon the batter into a mini muffin tin and bake (now that’s my kind of baking recipe). For another, the whole baking-brownies-in-a-mini-muffin pan thing is genius–no breakage, no muss, no fuss, and they’re cute to boot. And yet another, they’re made with black beans in lieu of flour. There’s all kinds of fiber and goodness in this gluten-free brownie recipe, and yet all you’re going to hear on the receiving end is “man, these are AWESOME.” 

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Life is Like Rhubarb and Strawberry

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The combo of strawberry and rhubarb always makes me think of my Mom. Her strawberry-rhubarb pie would grace the table each spring as surely as tulips would burst from the ground. When I was a child, I turned my nose up at it for being so tart. By the time I grew up and learned to actually like it, it had become to me like a painting that’s hung on the same wall in the same place for twenty years–I didn’t pay it much attention.

I first made this crostata four years ago as my own spin on mom’s traditional pie. A year and a half later, in the dead of winter, mom had a massive stroke. There were no pies on the table that spring, and there never will be by her hand again. I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t kicking myself just a little now, wishing I’d appreciated her version more while it lasted.

But those if-only’s only sour the present moment, which is quite sweet when I choose to see it as such. Whereas in the past, Mother’s Day meant a card and a gift exchanged across the country, now Mom–and Dad–live right here in Healdsburg. For the second year in a row, we get to celebrate with three generations of mothers and daughters in my family, and I can finally ask mom for her recipe … while serving her my Strawberry-Rhubarb Crostata.

At the risk of sounding a whole lot like Forrest Gump, life is like rhubarb and strawberry. A little bit sour, a little bit sweet, each one intensifying the properties of the other. There’s balance there, and both need to be tasted in order to embrace the full pleasure of the whole.

From my family to yours … happy Mother’s Day.

Let Your Food Make You Laugh

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Can we all agree that “fusilli” is a fun word to say? I know that may seem off-topic, but it’s not. Really.

I wrote last week about about the real meaning of comfort food in that food is so much more than just what we eat, and you all confirmed the notion big time with your answers to the State of the Kitchen Survey. Over three-quarters of you said you defined “being nourished” as “eating in a way that makes me feel healthy and energized.”

That ain’t no diet, folks. That’s a way of being. It’s a feeling that permeates beyond our physical cells into our souls.

So how does all that apply to Fusilli with Artichokes and Swiss Chard? Because one of the best ways to bring that healthy and energized spirit into your eating is to bring light and laughter into your kitchen. This dish not only has all the Nourishing components for your body–whole grain pasta, lots of leafy greens and seasonal goodies, a touch of goat cheese to amp up the creaminess factor–it’ll have fun with you if you let it.

Here’s an experiment.

1. Get everything ready to make this dish and take note of how you’re feeling–if you’re preoccupied about something at work, feeling rushed because of an evening activity, what have you.

2. Now look at your kid–or at yourself in the mirror–while holding a piece of dried pasta and say the word “fusilli” 10 times fast. Just try not to smile or laugh. I dare you.

3. Now … check in and see if your mindset has lightened or changed, and how that shift affects the rest of your dinner.

Did you notice a shift? Share your experience in a comment below.

What is Your Comfort Food?

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I posted something on Facebook yesterday that got me thinking as I struggled to find my own answer to the question.

The alarming regularity of unthinkable tragedies as of late have taught me something about myself. When tragedy hits I, like so many others, ache to do something to make things better and to offer comfort. But in this world where we’re all so interconnected and yet so far from arm’s reach, it’s just not possible to hug those who are grieving, or care for them in the coming days. So I tend to just cocoon.

This time–and I hate that there is a this time–I wanted to break that pattern and go outward, finding a way to bring comfort to others as they deal with what’s happened in their own way. Whenever anyone I love is hurting, I get an overwhelming urge to cook for them. It feels to me like I’m handing them a piece of my heart and saying “I hurt for you too, and I hope that makes this a little less lonely and painful to go through.”

So I decided to ask a question: What dish would you bring to a friend who was grieving?

What struck me after asking it was how difficult it was for me to choose. Cakes or cookies felt inappropriately celebratory. Some dishes felt too fussy, others too much like a cocktail party. This one, though, spoke to my heart–it’s full of warmth and good things from the garden, and the dollop of pesto is a reminder of the inevitability that brighter days do lie ahead.

This whole circuitous train of thought brought to life something I’ve said a gazillion times before and I’ll probably say a gazillion times again: food is about so much more than just what we eat.

I’d love to know … what would your answer be?

The 2013 State of the Kitchen Survey is Here

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I’m conducting a never-been-done-before “State of the Kitchen” survey for 2013.

Would you do me a huge favor? Would you please take just a few minutes to fill out these nine questions?

To thank you for your time, I’m going to save you time with a free copy of my Make Ahead Meals e-book. PLUS, when you take the survey you’ll automatically be entered into a drawing to win a fabulous NOURISH Evolution market bag (it really is the coolest bag out there).

You can take the survey here.

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It was you all, really, who inspired this survey. With every conversation and e-mail I have, I’m struck by how unique your stories are—you’ve got four kids and no time to cook, you’re newly married and still rely heavily on take-out—and yet there’s a common chord resonating beneath it all. That’s what I’m driving to get at with this survey.

In addition to unearthing empowering insights for busy women everywhere, your answers will also help me shape both the free content on NOURISH Evolution, in socialville and in my weekly e-mail, and the paid offerings we’ll be developing in the future to be spot-on helpful to YOU. In the moment. When you really just want to pick up the phone and call the pizza man.

To take the survey, just click here

Please complete the survey by Saturday, April 20th. (It’ll take you less than 5 minutes … I promise).

Thanks a million for your time and thoughtfulness!

All the best,

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PS – You’ll automatically get my Make Ahead Meals e-book for free when you take the survey. I’ll announce the winners of the NOURISH Evolution market bags (5 random picks from those who take the survey) on Monday, April 22nd on our Facebook page.

P.P.S. – If you know other busy women who would like to add their voice, by all means please share. The more the merrier!