Margarita Recipe

This margarita recipe is easy to make with 4 ingredients! Tart and refreshing, this classic cocktail is one of my all-time favorite drinks.

Learn how to make a margarita! This classic cocktail is easy to make with 4 ingredients: tequila, lime juice, orange liqueur, and agave (or simple syrup). If you have them on hand, you can mix up this margarita recipe in under 5 minutes! A margarita is one of the most popular cocktails in the world. Where I live in Austin, Texas, it is the most popular cocktail, period. I can’t tell you how many I’ve sipped on patios of various restaurants around town. But I still have a soft spot for a homemade margarita. I love that I’m completely in control of…

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Easy Tostadas

This easy tostada recipe is a fast, fresh dinner! I pile crispy tortillas with flavorful toppings like refried beans, avocado, veggies, and cheese.

This tostada recipe is a fun, fresh, and FAST weeknight dinner. Just load up crunchy tostadas with toppings like refried beans, crisp lettuce and cabbage, tomatoes, cheese, and avocado. Squeeze with lime juice, and dig in! This recipe has become a great family meal for us lately…because it’s not a true “recipe” at all. It’s more of a suggestion—the toppings here are flexible, and in our house, everyone chooses their own. I take my tostadas with extra avocado and spicy peppers, Jack skips the avocado and piles on extra cheese, and Ollie goes for whatever he’s in the mood for that…

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Pickled Serrano Peppers

Love spicy food? These pickled serrano peppers are for you! I like making them to add a pop of tangy, spicy flavor to tacos, nachos, and more.

Move over, jalapeños! Serrano peppers are my current chile obsession for one simple reason: they’re spicier. Serrano vs. Jalapeño Peppers On the Scoville Scale, the official system for measuring the pungency of peppers, serrano peppers score higher than jalapeños. They clock in at 10,000 to 23,000 SHU (Scoville Heat Units) versus jalapeños’ Scoville rating of 2,500 to 8,000. That’s 3 to 4 times hotter! But lately, I’ve felt like the difference in heat level between jalapeño and serrano peppers is even greater than that. I think the jalapeños at my grocery store are tasting more and more like green bell…

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Grilled Asparagus

This grilled asparagus recipe is my favorite spring and summer side dish. Simply seasoned with olive oil, salt, and pepper, it's fresh and delicious.

spring / side dishes

Grilled asparagus is the best spring and summer side dish! It’s tender, juicy, and lightly charred, and it cooks in minutes on the grill. Seasoned simply with olive oil, salt, pepper, and maybe a squeeze of lemon juice, it pairs perfectly with almost any meal. Below, you’ll find my easy method for cooking asparagus on the grill, along with my favorite ways to serve it. Even if you’re an asparagus skeptic, I hope you’ll try this recipe. My husband Jack used to claim he hated asparagus, but once he tried it grilled, he became a convert. Who knows? You might…

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Strawberry Spinach Salad

This strawberry spinach salad is filled with pecans, feta, and a tangy poppy seed dressing. Perfect for spring or summer, it's simple and fresh.

This strawberry spinach salad is perfect for spring and early summer. It starts with a base of fresh spinach—one of the first vegetables to appear at my farmers market each spring—and is topped off with juicy strawberries, crisp red onion, toasty pecans, and salty feta cheese. My sweet and tangy poppy seed dressing ties it all together. I think it’s fair to say that this combination is pretty classic (doesn’t Panera have a strawberry poppyseed salad on its menu?), but I still wanted to share this recipe because it’s so simple and fresh, with a wonderful pop of sweetness and color…

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Poppy Seed Dressing

This poppy seed dressing recipe is easy to make with 6 ingredients. Lightly creamy, sweet, and tangy, it's delicious on green salads, slaws, and more!

I can already tell that this poppy seed dressing is going to be the star of my spring and summer salad dressing rotation. It’s lightly creamy, sweet, and tangy, perfect for adding a pop of bright flavor to green salads, slaws, and more. I first started making it to use on my strawberry spinach salad, but once I had it in my fridge, I found that it went well on SO many different combinations of fruits and veggies. This poppy seed dressing is one to make on repeat. Like all my homemade salad dressings, this poppy seed dressing is easy…

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How to Make Hard Boiled Eggs

Learn how to make hard boiled eggs perfectly every time! With this easy method, they'll be easy to peel and have vibrant yellow yolks.

cooking basics / vegetarian

Here’s the good news: perfect hard boiled eggs are easy to make. …And the bad news: so are less-than-perfect ones. I don’t know about you, but I’ve certainly cooked my fair share of the latter. When you try to peel away the shell, half the whites come along with it, or when you cut it open, the yolk is slightly green instead of brilliant yellow. Pretty disappointing, if you ask me. See, cooking perfect hard boiled eggs is easy, but that doesn’t mean that the process you use doesn’t matter. After years of trial and error, I’m happy to say…

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Eggs Benedict

This eggs Benedict recipe tastes like it's from a restaurant, but it's easy to make at home! My rich, creamy hollandaise sauce takes it over the top.

This eggs Benedict recipe is guaranteed to impress. It consists of crisp English muffins topped with perfectly poached eggs, creamy, dreamy homemade hollandaise sauce, and juicy tomato slices (instead of the traditional Canadian bacon). I love to make it when I host friends or family for brunch, because even though it tastes like something from a restaurant, it’s surprisingly simple to make. You can even do some of the prep ahead! You can find the complete recipe at the bottom of this post. Along the way, I’m sharing my best tips for how to make eggs Benedict as well as serving…

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Easy Carrot Cake

This easy carrot cake recipe is one of our favorite desserts! It's wonderfully moist and warmly spiced. Tangy cream cheese frosting takes it over the top.

spring

Jack declared this carrot cake recipe the best he’s ever tried. Coming from him, that’s high praise, because carrot cake is his favorite dessert of all time! I don’t disagree with him though. I think this carrot cake recipe is just about perfect! It has a wonderful moist crumb and warm depth of flavor from spices, vanilla, and brown sugar. This cake is chock-full of freshly grated carrots, and while it’s delicious plain, it really shines with a thick layer of tangy cream cheese frosting on top. This carrot cake recipe is easy to make with basic ingredients. It’s simple enough to…

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Roasted Asparagus

This oven roasted asparagus recipe is an easy, delicious spring side dish. The spears are tender, juicy, and flavorful. Ready in 15 minutes!

spring / side dishes

This roasted asparagus recipe is my favorite spring side dish. I love how the spears become tender, juicy, and lightly browned in the oven, with frizzled, crispy tips. I think they’re delicious straight off the baking sheet (I’ve been known to eat half a pan while putting the finishing touches on dinner…), but they’re even more flavorful with seasonings like Parmesan cheese, garlic, fresh herbs, or a squeeze of lemon juice. Another reason to love roasted asparagus? It’s so easy to make. It only bakes for about 15 minutes, meaning that you can throw it together on a weeknight or…

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Homemade Granola

There's a lot to love about this homemade granola recipe. It's easy to make, it's healthy, it's delicious, and it will make your kitchen smell amazing!

vegan / snack

If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent hours in the granola aisle at the grocery store, trying to find just the right kind. You know the one—it has lots of fun mix-ins like nuts and dried fruit; it’s sweet, but not too sweet; it’s spiced with cinnamon; and it’s filled with big clusters of oats and nuts. …And if you’re anything like me, you’ve come to realize that it’s nearly impossible to find the perfect granola at the store. Enter: my homemade granola recipe! Instead of using white or brown sugar, I sweeten it naturally with maple syrup (honey works…

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