Cooked celery is so good! This really hit the spot. It tasted 'spare' (though delicious) in contrast to 'rich' (and totally over-the-top delicious) offerings at recent holiday parties. And it calls for ingredients that are often on hand, just celery, canned tomatoes, olives and capers. If you haven't 'celebrated celery' recently, or ever, now's the moment! LANGUAGE NOTE ... A reader recently brought my attention to the careless specification of a 'stalk' of celery when I really meant to call for one 'rib' of celery. It really peeves her so please join me in listing a rib unless we really mean the whole and entire stalk, which would be a hole pile of celery, for sure. NUTRITION NOTES ... Low cal. Low carb. One Weight Watchers point. High fiber. Low cholesterol. Filling. Satisfying. Cheap. Good! FROM THE ARCHIVES ... Other celebrations of celery are this wintry celery, apple and walnut salad , a simple braised celery , last week's Bruss

This simple squash from the October/Halloween issue of Martha Stewart Living really called to me. Once in the kitchen, however, the instructions stymied. "4 delicata squashes, cut lengthwise into 1-inch-thick wedges, seeds discarded" I puzzled. I pondered. What about the skin, shouldn't it be removed? And it's really difficult, dangerous even, to slice uncooked winter squash lengthwise: hard to get a grip, plus a knife can slip against the dense flesh and voila, there goes a finger. So I trusted Martha and left the skins on. But I trusted my knife instincts and sliced the squash in half, lengthwise, down the center. I scooped out the seeds and then cut one half into rainbow slices. For a test, I roasted the other half whole, filled with glaze. THE VERDICT The skins of delicata squash are definitely edible, though more skin-ish than many will appreciate. The hot pepper glaze is extraordinary. I would definitely roast delicata in the same rainbow slices again. I won

If there's a single ingredient that evokes the holiday spirit, it's the cranberry. This week's Kitchen Parade column features three cranberry recipes . First up is a luscious dessert, an English-style cranberry pudding from an old family recipe ... plus two simple holiday treats, a crimson-colored cranberry applesauce and a cranberry champagne cocktail, both oh-so-festive! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ You know the good works from Doctors Without Borders ? Without taking a dollar from your pocket, you can put one in theirs. Just click the "Color for a Cause" box on the right, then search for something red . Red mittens? A red sled? How about a racy red lipstick? That's all there is to it. Ten thousand searches will yield $10,000 for a worthy cause. If the ad is gone, the $10,000 goal has been reached. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Meeting food bloggers is great fun. But yesterday Karen from FamilyStyle and I met up with a Mommy Blogger, Dana from Mamalogues . She's smart, she's fu

The traditional carrot and daikon salad that's used in the wonderful Vietnamese bahn mi sandwiches, just grated carrot and daikon in a "quick" pickle that's pickled without actually having to "can" the jar. Not just vegan, " Vegan Done Real ". ~recipe & photo updated 2015~ ~ more recently updated recipes ~ 2006: Refrigerator pickles, ya gotta love 'em. A few minutes of work, then wait a day or so: then there they are, ready to add piquancy to a plate, spark to a sandwich, specialness to a salad, for the next couple of weeks. This grated carrot and grated daikon combination is especially nice, color-wise, taste-wise, easy-wise. It's great also on a plate, also tucked into a sandwich, like a banh mi . 2015: This time I envisioned nice, even skinny bits of carrot and daikon so pulled out the mandoline for cutting the carrot and daikon. What a pain! Not hard, just time-consuming to do it carefully – safety is key, check out the safe

The December 2006 issue of Sauce, St. Louis' great food magazine, features a story -- yes, I'm the author! -- celebrating the world of food blogs. It features all the St. Louis food blogs and some nearby Missouri and Illinois food blogs too. (Where did we go to high school? Just ask! Here's the current list of St. Louis food bloggers.) Check out the brand-new list of some of my favorite food blogs from across the world too. Where's that story again? Here! SPECIAL OFFER: I'll send a box of Bissinger's Handcrafted Chocolates to a commenter (selected at random from all the comments by December 15th) who identifies a particular sentence edited by Sauce. Hint: A real asset to St. Louis foodies, Sauce is also proudly MSM, main stream media. (Be nice, commenters, they really can't help it ... which makes it our job to help others understand by being both kind and generous. Plus Sauce has the greatest guide to St. Louis restaurants. And the hardest food q

UPDATE Please visit the brand-new home for St. Louis food bloggers, StlFoodBlogs.com . One of the great pleasures of food blogging is 'meeting' people from across the world. But it's even more fun meeting people whose kitchens you can come to know, first in the virtual world and then in the real world. Let me introduce you to some of the best foodies, some of the best foodie friends, ever. Here they are, the St. Louis food bloggers, plus some nearby food bloggers we love to see every chance possible! [Photo taken in 2006 at the first meeting of St. Louis food bloggers ] ST LOUIS FOOD BLOGS (1) A Veggie Venture ~ by Alanna, my own blog and St. Louis' first food blog, with vegetable recipes from Asparagus to Zucchini (2005) (2) FamilyStyle Food ~ Karen from Webster Groves cooks for husband, two kids and recipe contests and now for clients at DinnerStyle (2006) (3) One Hot Stove ~ Nupur moved to St. Louis in 2006 and cooks vegetarian home-style

From time to time, local readers ask, "Where do you get [insert: great tomatoes, perfect peaches, great Parmesan cheese]?" So here it is, my favorite sources here in St. Louis, many in the Kirkwood-Webster area. Check back often for updated sources. If you have a favorite that's not on the list, please leave a comment! St. Louis Vegetables, Fruits & Farm Foods & St. Louis Farmers Markets & St. Louis Cheese Sources & St. Louis Meat & St. Louis Sweets & Treats & St. Louis Kitchen Shops & St. Louis Grocery Stops & St. Louis Bread & Pastries & St. Louis - Worth a Stop! & St. Louis Food Media & Recipes with Special Missouri Products See also St. Louis Food Gift Ideas VEGETABLES, FRUITS & FARM FOODS CJ's Produce At the Kirkwood Farmers Market, fresh local produce FAVORITES: Eckert's peaches, Cascade tomatoes for slow-roasted tomatoes Centennial Farms Many local apple varieties,