Vegetarian Labor Day Recipes

Healthy, delicious, vegetarian summer recipes! My favorite burgers, BBQ sandwiches, pasta salad, potato salad, slaw, cocktails, and desserts! Vegan options.

It’s just about Labor Day weekend, and my thoughts are: oh noooooo(!!), how did we get here already! Warm nights grilling out on our back deck… sunny farmers market strolls… available fresh produce… I’m not quite ready for this season to end but I will try my best to embrace fall as it comes. Until then, here’s a wrap-up of ALL of my favorite recipes that I made this summer. I’m hoping they provide a little inspiration for your weekend festivities! You can click directly on the images to go to each recipe. To drink: Spicy Watermelon Margaritas! These are…

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My Favorite Easy Summer Recipes

A round up of simple vegetarian summer dishes that elevate peak-season produce. Find ideas for delicious soups, salads, pastas, sandwiches, and more!

summer / vegetarian

This is how I feel about summer cooking: I don’t want to spend tons of time in the kitchen, but I DO want to make meals at home using all of the seasonal produce that is so stunning at this time of year. The nice thing about summer cooking is that since the ingredients are so wonderful, you don’t have to do much to them in order to make a great dish. Click on the pictures to go to the full recipes: Blackberry Basil Pizza This is the easiest recipe in this post! Because blackberries and basil are such flavorful…

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Meal Plan Recap + Grocery List (June)

A 3-day easy, healthy, vegetarian meal plan using fresh summer produce. Includes a printable grocery list. Perfect for weeknights and busy schedules.

meal plan / summer

Happy Sunday! As promised, here’s a recap of this week’s 3-day meal plan! If you’re tuning in for the first time this week, here’s what’s happening: A few months ago I did a 5-day plan where I started with one set of ingredients that worked into 5 consecutive meals. A lot of you wrote me to say that it was helpful, so using that same inspiration – meals that share similar ingredients but do not all taste the same – I came up with this week’s plan: Here are the main ingredients: Mangoes: because they’re so juicy and refreshing for…

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My Trip to Stonyfield

Meeting Stonyfield Yogurt's partner farmers truly inspired me. They are passionate about and dedicated to producing good, organic food.

One of the great perks of my job is when I get to visit new, picturesque places and meet farmers who so passionately live for their work. I got this in spades when Stonyfield invited me to Vermont to visit some of their partner organic family farms and to hear from their co-founder Gary Hirschberg. I’m not sure what I expected, but after spending two days meeting with the farmers and hearing Gary’s mission of (basically) converting our whole planet to organic, I left truly inspired. I was delighted to see that these farms are true family farms, as Stonyfield…

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A Simple Saturday Morning

A peek into our at-home ideal Saturday morning - breakfast, puppies, coffee, OJ & more :)

breakfast / at-home

It’s spring(!) and our Saturday mornings are feeling so much happier and brighter now that the sun is shining and there’s finally not any snow on the ground. I love Saturday morning, I love not leaving the house until at least 1pm, and I love watching TV until we run out of things to watch. Somewhere in there, I’m also making a healthy breakfast (or brunch). Here’s a peek at what an ideal Saturday looks like for us: First things first, we wake up next to this cute face: … that is – until “cute” turns demanding. What you’re not…

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5-Day Meal Plan Recap + Grocery List

A 5-day easy, healthy, vegetarian meal plan, plus grocery list. Perfect for weeknights and busy schedules. Vegan and gluten free options.

meal plan / spring

As promised, here’s a recap of the 5-day meal plan that I posted this past week. First things first, why did I all of a sudden meal plan for 5 days (and never before? ha ha). Well, I’ve had the idea for some time, but like many things, it hit the back burner. With the launch of our new meal journal, I thought: “Welp, now’s the time!” There’s a concept that I touch on in our cookbook… I call it “cooking backward” and it differs from many other meal planning approaches. You see, I’m not a person who plans, organizes,…

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Kale Pesto Mushroom Pistachio Bowls

Tangy balsamic mushrooms, quinoa, chickpeas & a bright kale pesto top these yummy bowls. Easy & healthy, they're weeknight dinner perfection.

dinner / vegan / gluten free

Last August, we decided to move to Chicago. When we first walked around what would become our new neighborhood, it was sunny, warm, children were playing, and the birds were singing. It was pretty hard to picture the snowy cold weather that would only be a few months away. I grew up in Chicago, but the dreamer in me still thought “maybe this year it won’t be cold.” As the fall weather started to become winter weather, the realist in me spoke up and said, “It’s Chicago. We’re going to hole up in this house, cook all winter, and order…

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Our Trip to the French Wine Region of Beaujolais

travel / France

In 2015, I had the amazing opportunity to visit vineyards all over the Rhone Valley. I loved every bit of it – the hilltop views, the lavender fields, the food, the wine (of course)… the only thing missing was my better half, Jack, who was stuck at work. This past fall we not only got to go to Beaujolais together, but it happened to fall on the week of our wedding anniversary. It was picture perfect, except the little mishap in the beginning where we missed our flight. Oops. We scrambled to get on a flight the next day, landed…

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3-Layer Fruit Smoothie

This 3-layer fruit smoothie is the ultimate healthy breakfast! I'll make the whole thing for a special occasion or just one layer for a quick, yummy treat.

vegan / gluten free / beverage

Nothing says love like a smoothie, right? 🙂 I love love love Valentine’s Day, but not in the fancy-dinner-prix-fixe dinner sort of way. I love it for of all of the cute things that remind me of being a little kid… tiny paper cards, homemade cupcakes with pink frosting, heart shaped candies… so in the spirit of being crafty, I made this 3-layer fruit smoothie! I always see layered fruit smoothies on Instagram and think, “who the heck has time to make three separate smoothies?” – but here I am doing it. It actually was pretty simple, and while I…

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We’re hiring!

Hello friends and readers, I’m looking for a Kitchen/Photo Shoot Assistant to help with food prep for photo shoots, recipe testing/development, and food styling/plating. This position can be full time or part time depending on relevant experience. I’m looking for someone who is excited about what we do here and wants to help get more of it out there! Interested? PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES INCLUDE: – Food Prep for Photo Shoots This means that you love to go to the grocery store and you’re good at choosing photo-ready ingredients. You love going to a second store if store #1 is out of…

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2017 Cookbook Gift Guide

My favorite cookbooks from 2017 - all make great gifts!

holiday / cookbooks

It’s that time of year again! You’ve gone through your list and checked it twice… yet there are still a few friends and family members left and you don’t know what to get for them. How about a cookbook? I always say this, but I think cookbooks make the best gifts because there’s always one to suit every taste. Or maybe I just say this because I personally love (and love to hoard) cookbooks! Anyway, here are my favorites from this past year. Many I’ve written about before, many you’ll hear more about in the next few months. They’re all…

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Hello, we're Jeanine and Jack.