Category Archives: Kitchen Tips

When to Use Nonstick Pans, and When Not To

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I’m discovering that a lot of people have a stash of beat-up nonstick pans in their cupboards that they use all … the … time. And they have maybe one shiny, pristine stainless-steel pan they’re afraid to use. Does that scenario sound familiar?

Let me simplify your life.

Got a cast-iron skillet? Read this>

nonstick-pan-vs-regular-pan

When to Use Nonstick and Regular Pans

First of all, nonstick pans and regular pans are like apples and oranges. The uses of each are almost mutually exclusive. If you wanted to fry an egg or sear a delicate fish, you’d use a nonstick pan. If you want to saute vegetables or whip up a quick stir-fry, you’d use stainless. Why? Because nonstick pans are all about preventing any sort of stick at all. Stainless-steel pans–used properly–are all about getting a flavorful crust on the food and just enough to stick to the bottom (that stuff is called fond) to create a base for easy pan sauces and such.

[wpcol_1half id=”” class=”” style=””]When to Use Nonstick

  • Egg dishes
  • Delicate fish (firmer fish like tuna and salmon are fine in a stainless-steel pan)
  • Oozy, cheesy things like quesadillas
  • Stir-fried Asian rice noodles
[/wpcol_1half] [wpcol_1half_end id=”” class=”” style=””]When to Use Stainless Steel

  • Stir-fries
  • Sauteed vegetables
  • Seared meat, chicken and seafood
  • Sauces
[/wpcol_1half_end]

How to Use Nonstick and Stainless-Steel Pans

[wpcol_1half id=”” class=”” style=””]Nonstick

You always want a thin coating of fat in a nonstick pan if you’re preheating it, so that the heat doesn’t go to work directly on the chemicals in the nonstick coating. They also shouldn’t be heated too much above medium.

3 recipes for your nonstick pan:

[/wpcol_1half] [wpcol_1half_end id=”” class=”” style=””]Stainless Steel

Unlike nonstick pans, you actually want to pre-heat stainless-steel pans. Heating the pan over medium heat before adding fat or food causes the cells to expand and create a slicker surface. Then swirl in your oil and wait until it, too, is heated through. That essentially gives you two natural layers of “nonstick” coating that works wonders for most foods.

Once the pan and the oil are heated, add whatever you’re cooking. If you’re searing something like pork chops, be sure to leave plenty of room between them for air to circulate so that each piece can brown. Otherwise, they’ll just steam and will never get that lovely bronze crust. Same goes for sauteing … don’t crowd the pan.

If it seems like food is sticking, leave it alone for a bit … it will unstick itself once it’s good and ready. In fact, once you put your food in and give it an initial toss (if sauteing or stir-frying), just walk away from the pan. If you futz with it too often, you’ll keep it from forming that awesome crust. Plus, life is just easier that way.

3 recipes for your stainless-steel pan:

[/wpcol_1half_end]One last thing … while I wouldn’t necessarily call nonstick pans disposable, they certainly aren’t going to (and shouldn’t) become heirlooms either. I tend to replace my nonstick pans every 12-18 months and I spend accordingly–usually between $15 and $30 per pan (P.S. — I only have 2 nonstick pans at any given time … a big one and a medium one). My stainless-steel pans, on the other hand, cost a small fortune … but I’ve had them for over a decade and know they’ll still be going strong for several more.

For any of you who have been scared of stainless, I hope this helps! And if you haven’t yet branched out into the non nonstick realm, check out some of our favorite pans in our NOURISH Evolution Market.

 

Make These Desserts Ahead and Enjoy Your Holiday!

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I’ve always considered desserts the simplest part of the holiday feast. That’s because you can get it all done–or at least, mostly done–a couple of days before the big day so you have plenty of time to attend to other chores and dishes.

make-ahead-desserts-framesHere are five delicious, seasonal desserts that you can make at least two to three days ahead and savor throughout the holidays.

  1. Apple Pie with Chinese Five Spice and Hazelnut Crumb Topping. Chinese five spice powder adds a surprising, bright note to the cooked caramel-y apple filling while a nutty crumb topping adds crunch. You can make the Toasted Nut Pastry Dough up to a week ahead, pop it in the fridge, and then cook the filling, blind-bake the crust and finish off the pie a couple of days before the holiday. (Pressed for time? Pick up a pre-made whole-wheat pastry crust. We won’t tell.)
  2. Spiced Pumpkin Harvest Bundt Cake with Pecans. Linda West Eckhardt created this homey, old-fashioned treat to celebrate NOURISH Evolution’s first birthday. It’s golden and rich with warm spices and a lemony glaze. Leftovers will make delightful snacks all weekend long.
  3. Chocolate Angel Food Cake. For some crowds, only chocolate will do, so whip up our angel food cake. Only instead of macerated strawberries, pair it with Grandma Friese’s Whole Cranberries, which are soaked in port. It’s a gorgeous holiday presentation.
  4. Small bites. Desserts don’t have to be lavish to end the feast on a high note, and your guests may well appreciate a selection of little treats. (Honestly, I’m tempted to go this route myself this year.) Decorated with dried cranberries and slivered almonds, Crunchy Ruby-Studded Meringue Buttons are light and festively pretty. Our Chocolate Orange Pistachio Biscotti are prefect for dunking in after-dinner coffee, while these Boozy Orange-Pecan Truffles are rich-tasting, impressive and not too heavy. Make extra and freeze ‘em to enjoy throughout the holiday season.
  5. Pumpkin Tart with Maple Whipped Cream and Toasted Walnuts. Graham crackers, sugar and butter add up to the world’s easiest crust for this tart. Add a simple, spicy pumpkin filling and you’re good to go. Bake the tart up to two days before the feast and store it in the fridge. You also can whip the cream a day or two in advance and refrigerate it. Toast the nuts a day or two ahead and stash them in an airtight container.

Have a happy–and sweet–holiday!

A Winemaker’s Advice for a Laid-Back Thanksgiving

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I recently had the pleasure of sitting next to Beringer’s winemaker, Laurie Hook, at a wine dinner focusing on Beringer’s outstanding wines from Knight’s Valley (if you don’t know about Beringer’s Knight’s Valley tier, do yourself a favor and click here) and thought she’d be the perfect person to tap for this year’s Thanksgiving wine pairings. Here’s what Laurie had to say.

Thanksgiving wine pairingLia: First off, what are your thoughts on the big Thanksgiving feast?

Laurie: I love all the holidays, but Thanksgiving is a special one for me as a winemaker, since it falls just after harvest. It really has that feeling to me of celebrating harvest, celebrating friends and family, celebrating time together, which I look forward to after an intense season with a lot of long hours. By the time I’m done with harvest, I’m ready to reconnect.

Lia: Do you have any favorite Thanksgiving dishes?

Laurie: I like to keep things savory. The sweetness level, other than dessert, is pretty low at my Thanksgiving table.

Lia: What wines will be on your table?

Laurie: I’m a big fan of setting a lot of wines out on the sideboard and letting people play. We’ll have people at the table who really love wine, and those who like it, but aren’t as passionate about it, so I like to have different bottles of different levels and varietals available. Most of all, I want people to enjoy the meal and eat and drink what they like.

That said, I’ll definitely have a bottle of our Private Reserve Chardonnay—it’s a really versatile wine that holds up to a lot of different foods and is great for people who aren’t big red drinkers. For red, I like having a medium-bodied pinot noir and a cabernet sauvignon on the table. I’m excited about our 2009 Napa Cabernet Sauvignon; it’s generous on blackberry flavors and cedar and brown spice notes, and its satiny tannins make it softer and rounder and easier to pair with things—like turkey—that you normally wouldn’t turn to cabernet for.

Lia: Any special pairings?

Laurie: I’m starting with a butternut squash soup that I’m really excited about pairing with our Alluvium Blanc—a Semillon-Sauvignon Blanc blend. It has bright acidity and citrus from the sauvignon blanc and a buttery mouthfeel from the Semillon that I think are going to go beautifully with the soup.

In general, though, I like people to discover for themselves what they like. By having different bottles on the table—a very Thanksgiving-esque way to serve—you can try tastes of different wines with different foods. It takes the feeling that there’s a “right” and “wrong” way to pair away and allows people to just play. I like to send the message of “have fun, don’t take this so seriously … just experiment and relax and enjoy yourself.”

Lia: What about dessert?

Laurie: We’ll have the usual Thanksgiving desserts and pies, and I’ll definitely be setting out a bottle of our Nightingale. It’s got gorgeous balance with notes of honeyed apricot and caramelized sugar. Honestly? I could actually just have a glass of that for dessert.

Lia: You and I bonded over dinner about sustainability and, in particular, how a big label like Beringer approaches it. Can you talk a bit about your take on the subject as winemaker?

Laurie: First off, I have to say that we want to do the right thing. We live in this community, kids are growing up here, we’re breathing the air. We want to feel like we’re leaving the world in a better place … but it does take work.

I approach sustainability in a similar way as I do winemaking—it’s not one or two things that makes it successful, it’s paying attention to everything you do along the way. Thankfully, at Beringer, the new emphasis on “being green” is a comfortable fit with what we’ve been doing for years. If you look at our large vineyards from earlier generations, for instance, you’ll find wildlife corridors and trees and a whole ecological system. And we partnered with the Fish Friendly Farming certification program years ago to protect natural watersheds and rivers and waterways.

But we’re always looking for ways to do more. We’re in the process of becoming a Certified California Sustainable Winegrower, for instance. We’re composting more and more of our humus, have installed solar energy, and have reduced water usage by 13 million gallons in the last 4 years. We’re even doing things like reducing glass usage to cut down on packaging and lighten our carbon footprint with transportation.

Lia: Lots to be thankful for!

Laurie: Absolutely. The most important thing is that it all adds up; even just turning off the lights. We all have a lot more personal power in this area than we think if we just pay attention to what we do every day. I think sustainability needs to be both systemic, as a company, and individual. When you leave work, you want those same values to continue on after work. One of the things I love is that because they’re teaching these things in school now, kids are holding adults responsible. They’re great catalysts!

Zip Some Greens

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For years, I was put off from eating greens like chard and kale and mustard because of the cumbersome step of cutting out the stems. Don’t get me wrong, I loved–and still love–their grassy, earthy flavor. And the health benefits of leafy greens, from strong bones to a healthy heart, are legendary. But (insert whine) it took so much time.

And then one day, I honestly don’t remember if I’d read about the technique or was just feeling feisty, I held a big fan of Swiss chard in my fist and just zipped the leaves clean off. It was shocking how quickly it happened. Then I did it again and again, and before I knew it, the entire bunch was de-stemmed and laying in a neat little pile . . . all in less than 60 seconds. It was an easy way to save time and get those greens on the table for a weeknight meal.

Technique for “Zipping” Leafy Greens

  • Hold the stalk firmly in one hand
  • With the thumb and forefinger of the other hand, pinch where the base of the leaves meets the stem and tug gently to separate
  • Continue tugging up the line of the stem, zipping the leaves off as you go (you’ll get the hang of how much pressure you need)

Watch the video here:

Try the Slow Food $5 Challenge

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If I had a penny for every time I heard someone say, “but fresh, organic food is so expensive” in response to me waxing euphoric about a nourishing dish, I could afford dinner at Cyrus. So I was thrilled to see Slow Food put out the challenge for slow-food-5-dollar-challengeAmericans to “take back the value meal” (love the double entendre) on Saturday, September 17th by cooking up a meal of fresh, local foods for under $5.

So let’s get cooking! You can join a grass roots potluck near you. You can buy this week’s Nourish Weekly Menus (we took the $5 challenge to heart–pricing by non-pantry items–and wrote this post from the strategies we used to save money) for a whole week of delish budget fare. Or you can come up with your own by using our six tips below. If you DO make your own meal, please snap a pic and post it on our Facebook page. I’d love to do a follow-up post with a collage to show everyone how beautiful affordable food can be!

  1. Use seasonal produce.  This is like a “free gift with purchase.” It’s a proven fact that the tastiest, most luscious, peak-of-season foods are also the cheapest. It makes sense. Foods that are in season near you have far less distance to travel, which means lower transportation costs (and smaller carbon footprint!).
  2. Make use of healthy, cheap “filler” ingredients.  No, I don’t mean the creepy corn products that you can’t pronounce that make up the bulk of processed foods. I mean inexpensive ingredients–like cabbage and bulgur–that bring a natural heft to a dish. For instance, in this week’s menus, we beef up our Corfu Koftas with bulgur and use about 1/2 the beef. And we stuff Spicy Fish Tacos with a tangy slaw so you don’t rely on the fish (a relatively expensive ingredient) to dominate the dish.
  3. Venture outside your box.  So many of us have our standard go-to’s … steak, shrimp, salmon, chicken breast, etc. But, ironically, many of America’s traditional go-to’s are the priciest items at the market. All the more reason to explore the unknown. Different cuts of poultry (chicken legs and thighs are my favorite, and about 1/2 the price of breasts), meat (braising cuts are especially affordable) and different types of seafood. Our Curried Mussels, for instance (another dish featured this week), feed four for under $10 and are finger-lickin’ good.
  4. Buy in bulk.  Buying from the bulk bins can cut cost by two, three, even five times. Whole Foods, which can be pricey within the aisles, stocks an incredible array in their bulk bins. So explore different types of rice and grains, various flours and nuts, even pasta and dried fruit.
  5. Buy whole.  Whether you’re talking a chicken or a head of lettuce, you’re going to save significant dough by buying whole. I recently comparison shopped head lettuce versus pre-washed bagged for a television segment and even I was shocked: the gorgeous, ruffly head of organic, locally grown lettuce was FIVE TIMES cheaper than pre-washed, bagged lettuce ($1.95 for a 1-1/2 pound head versus $4.99/pound for pre-washed).
  6. Plan ahead.  There’s no disputing that planning ahead helps you save money. It keeps you from making impulse purchases (which can be expensive). It keeps you from dashing out for extra ingredients. It helps you use what you already have on hand. And it cuts down dramatically on food waste (up to 35% of America’s food goes to waste!). Insert shameless promotion here … hmmm, I wonder what kinds of resources are out there for helping you plan your meals ahead? Yep, you got it.

Remember, if you make your own meal–either from this week’s menus or on your own–snap a pic and post it on our Facebook page!

Back to Basics

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I’ve spent most of my career writing and developing recipes for long lead-time magazines. It wasn’t unusual for me to hit send and not see an article again until it was in print a year later. So it’s been a big change for me to teach classes face to face, as I did at Rancho La Puerta last week.

And I have to say: I love it. Now I get to see up close and personal where people trip up in the kitchen and when the aha! comes into their eyes. Here are three of the basics that come up again and again, yet leave the most lasting impact.

back-to-basics

  • Learn how to dice. One of the biggest hurdles to eating more vegetables is all the darn prep time. But learning how to quickly cut pieces of uniform size makes it go much faster … and makes prep time much more enjoyable. (Here’s how to dice an onion.)

How to: Cut your vegetable so it has a flat surface to rest on the cutting board. Hold your knife parallel to the cutting board and slice horizontal slices as thick as you want your cubes to be (it’s easiest if you leave a connector area, like the root end of an onion, in tact to hold the slices together). Then pinch those slices together with your left hand and cut lengthwise slices of the same width perpendicular to the cutting board. Continue to hold the pieces together with fingers like a claw and cut cross-wise slices the same width as the other two cuts. The result will be uniform cubes of vegetables—whether onion, sweet potato or zucchini.

  • Make mincing garlic easy. Those jars of minced garlic may seem like a great convenience, but you’re really not doing yourself any favors. Much of garlic’s pungency comes from the oils released by smashing or cutting the cloves, and their strength dissipates over time. But once you learn how to quickly mince garlic, you’ll see it takes less than a minute to prep 3-5 cloves, which is all you need for most dishes.

How to: One at a time, smash a clove by laying the side of your chef’s knife on top (with the blade parallel to the cutting board) and hitting it hard with your palm. Remove the skin. Smash the skinless cloves once again with the side of your knife, scrape the garlic together and run over it a few times with your knife using a rocking motion; hold your hand flat on top of the tapered end of the blade to keep it still while you rock up and down with the hand holding the knife, moving forward and back over the garlic.

  • Make your stainless-steel pan nonstick. One of the most frustrating things in the kitchen is when food sticks to a pan. But it’s almost impossible to create a fond for making pan sauces if you’re using a nonstick pan all the time. The secret is to heat your regular pan before you add oil (or butter or bacon fat or …). When you add oil to a cold pan, it sinks into the microscopic nooks and crannies in the metal. Heating it first makes the cells expand to create a more uniform surface that, once slicked with oil, becomes virtually nonstick.

How to: Heat your regular pan over medium-high heat and wait until it feels like you’re warming your hands over a campfire when you hold your hands over the pan. Then swirl the oil around the pan and wait a few seconds for it to shimmer before adding whatever you’re going to sauté.

I hope these three back-to-basics cooking tips help you! Now go practice all three (OK, well, two) on this tasty Sautéed Succotash … you can get video tips for prepping just about every ingredient listed in our library of Kitchen Tips Video Clips.

Relandscape Your Kitchen

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Lately, as I’ve been getting my garden into shape, I’ve been reflecting on how some outdoor techniques can apply in the kitchen to create a healthier landscape to cook in. Here are three ways to relandscape your kitchen (and, unlike most landscaping projects, they won’t cost you a cent!):

relandscape-your-ktichen

  • Get Rid of What Doesn’t Work– When we first put our yard in, Christopher and I were on the lookout for ground cover. We saw one we liked—a euphorbia—and I bought a bunch of seedlings hoping they’d take root and spread. And oh did they spread. That particular type of euphorbia, it turns out, spreads by underground rhizome, and although the tag had promised it would max out at eight inches tall, most of our plants were bushy 2-foot monsters.What had seemed attractive at first ultimately threatened to choke out all the painstakingly placed plants in the yard. There’s a parallel here with our pantries. I used to pack my pantry with pretzels because they seemed attractive as a “low fat” choice. Over time, though, I discovered that I was always at battle with them. I wanted the pretzels to make me slim, but instead I’d feel sluggish and bloated after eating them. Sometimes, we just need to admit that something needs to come out.
  • Move Things Around– My mom’s yard is always in flux; in a good way. If a hosta becomes stagnant, she’ll relocate it under another tree. If a clump of lilies becomes too dense, she’ll dig them up and replant them throughout the garden. The lesson I’ve gleaned from my mom’s technique is that location does affect whether or not something “takes.”I think of this every time I open my cupboard and see my grains on the shelf above my head. I say I want to eat more whole grains—both in quantity and variety—and yet they’re essentially out of sight and in a place that takes effort to reach. By moving my grains to a more accessible location (on my project list), they’ll have more of a chance to take root in my family’s daily diet.
  • Try Some New Things– Some of my greatest triumphs in the garden have come from experimentation. One year, we became smitten with Padron peppers at a restaurant and decided to give growing them a try. Since then, they’ve been hands-down the most productive plant in the garden every year. Little delights like that can happen in your kitchen too, and you don’t even need to buy anything new. If you bought a jar of cardamom for a coffeecake recipe six months ago, give it a shot in a curry. If you have some dried chiles lingering on a shelf, throw a few in a pot of beans.

This week, seek out ways to relandscape your kitchen so it will better nurture you.

Great Food Nourishes “The Help”

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Are you planning to see “The Help” this week? It opens today, and it’s based on Kathryn Stockett’s novel about the lives of middle-class white women and the black women who work for them in Jackson, Miss., in 1962. Lia and I both read it last summer and loved it. (I might play hooky and catch a matinee this afternoon – shhh, don’t tell Lia!)

the-helpOf course, when it comes to anything about the Deep South, food plays an important role in the movie – especially Minny’s famous chocolate pie. And Southern fare has a special place in our hearts at NOURISH Evolution. Lia and I may both be California girls – Lia by choice and me by birth – but we’ve each done a turn in the South that left its mark on our palates. Lia went to college at Tulane in New Orleans, and I spent six years in Alabama.

So, in honor of “The Help,” we’re sharing some of our nourishing tastes of the South:

 

Is Healthy Food Really Too Expensive? 7 Ways to Save

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Healthy food is expensive. We’ve all heard that before. You may have read that on the Internet or heard it on NPR as outlets reported on a study in the journal Health Affairs.
is-healthy-food-too-expensive
Researchers from the University of Washington School of Public Health crunched some numbers to find out how much it would cost to eat according to the new federal Dietary Guidelines for Americans. They determined that meeting the government’s recommendation for potassium, a mineral that’s key to regulating blood pressure, would add $380 to the average person’s annual grocery bill.

They also found that the more saturated fat and added sugar a person consumes, the more food costs drop.

The issue isn’t that healthy food is too expensive but that our government’s current system of farm subsidies has made the price of unhealthy food artificially low. We spend less on food – not even 6% of our income – than the rest of the world.

Of course, all those cheap eats come at a very high price. What people save in the short term at the cash register when they load up on fatty, sugary, salty processed food they pay in the long term with their health. A recent large-scale study found that high-sodium/low-potassium diet – otherwise known as the standard American diet (SAD — really!) – significantly increases risk of death from all causes.

Is there any higher price than that?

But how much does healthy food cost, really? A USDA study earlier this year found it costs $2-$2.50 a day, on average, for the recommended daily 4-5 cups of fruits and vegetables. But other USDA research has also found geography has a big impact on food prices. What’s cheap for me in Southern California may be pricey for you.

We talk about food costs all the time in NOURISH Evolution, and while we believe a nourishing diet is a smart investment, we don’t think it should break your budget. With that in mind, here are 6 ways to save on your groceries:

  1. Cook! Awhile back we asked our Facebook followers to share their strategies for saving money on groceries. The No. 1 tip? Buy whole foods and cook from scratch.
  2. Plan meals. Planning is the cornerstone of a healthy diet. Armed with an organized shopping list, you’re less likely to give into temptation for expensive “extras” at the store and you’re more likely to use up everything you buy. (Need some help planning weeknight meals? Check out our Nourish Weekly Menus service.)
  3. Eat in season. It’s a bargain compared to out-of-season fare. It tastes better, too.
  4. Shop smart for organics. Don’t always want to pay extra for organic produce? Choose organic versions of the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen (fruits and vegetables most likely be contaminated with pesticides) and go for cheaper conventional versions of the Clean 15.
  5. Check out the bulk bins. You can save up to 60% on pantry staples – with much less packaging, which is nice for the planet.
  6. Pay cash. A recent study in the Journal of Consumer Research found people are much more likely to splurge on unhealthy treats when they pay with a credit or debit card than when they use cash. Lesson: Leave the plastic at home when you go grocery shopping.
  7. Minimize food waste. If you’re like the average American family, you throw away $2,275 a year in uneaten groceries tossed in the trash or the compost heap or sent down the garbage disposer. Remember, buy only what you need and use what you buy. This  pesto is an easy way to use up extra herbs – use any combo of herbs you have on hand.

 

7 Things to Have in Your Summer Pantry

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Yes, we all know how important it is to have a well-stocked pantry. Those beans and grains and canned tomatoes come in quite handy during months when produce is bleak. But what about at the height of summer, when veggies are at their peak? I’d argue it’s just as important to keep your pantry strategically stocked, so you can turn those mounds of tomatoes and zucchini and eggplant (oh my!) into healthy summer meals at the drop of a hat.

summer-pantryHere are seven things I like to keep stocked in my pantry during summer:

  • Anchovies — Anchovies are amazing. They add a punch of savory umami–and good-for-you omega-3 fatty acids–to anything from tomato sauce (think pasta putanesca) to salad dressing (yep, hail, Caesar). I think their flavor pairs especially well with summery foods like zucchini, tomato and pepper. Salted anchovies have the best flavor, but can be hard to come by. I like to keep a jar of good-quality anchovies in my fridge; if you’re intimidated by whole anchovies, you could opt for a tube of anchovy paste instead.
  • White Beans — In summer, when we tend to eat lighter and focus more heavily on vegetables, a can of beans can make a main course. Toss them into a fresh garden salad, stir them into a summer stir-fry, or mix them in with your favorite vegetarian pasta. Besides adding a lovely “umph” and flavor to the dish, beans bring a healthy dose of filling fiber and protein.
  • Capers — It’s so funny. In winter, I think of capers as a quintessentially cold-weather addition, and in summer I think of them as belonging to that season. They go especially well with tomatoes, and I like them paired with squash too. They also bring a nice zing to grilled summer foods like firm white fish fillets, chicken or steak. I like them best whisked into oil with a copious amount of minced garlic and parsley.
  • Good Extra-Virgin Olive Oil — Around the stove, I reach for an average Joe bottle of extra-virgin olive oil. Those tend to be filtered, which means they stand up better to a bit of heat. But come summer, I want the cloudiest, most unctuous, tongue-tingling extra-virgin olive oil I can find because I’m drizzling it fresh over raw veggies. That cloudiness comes from impurities in the oil–little bits of olive paste that were left after the first pressing. That sediment is what makes the oil so incredibly flavorful (and so incredibly healthy … the antioxidants are what make your tongue tingle), but it’s also what burns when heated. So keep your high-quality extra-virgin olive oil away from the stove … and use it liberally during summer!
  • Whole Grain Pasta — I haven’t yet met a summer vegetable I couldn’t turn into ten or more variations of pasta. If you’ve got a garden, and you’ve got a box of whole grain pasta on the shelf, you’ve got dinner (bonus if you have these other items in your pantry too!).
  • Good Salt — Get yourself a perfectly-ripe heirloom tomato. Slice it into thin wedges. Get yourself a great bottle of extra virgin olive oil and drizzle a bit on top. Get yourself a box of Maldon Sea Salt (or another flakey sea salt) and sprinkle on a pinch. Take a bite. I rest my case.
  • White and Red Wine Vinegar — Yes, I am an advocate of having four or more types of vinegar in your pantry at any given time. But to me, summer is a time for the mellow flavors of white and red wine vinegar. A couple of lemon cucumbers from the garden sprinkled with white wine vinegar and sea salt is often my mid-afternoon snack. And red wine vinegar, to me, makes a lovely, flavorful foil for mixed greens laden with tomatoes and onion.

These are seven things I’m never without come summer. What are yours?