Today's recipe at KitchenParade.com: My recipe for strawberry rhubarb cobbler , one of spring's classic dessert recipes, topped with a buttery cornmeal crumb. Thank goodness for rhubarb recipes . Otherwise A Veggie Venture might become altogether too healthful , bereft of sweets and desserts. Once the rhubarb is ready for harvesting and starts to show up in the grocery stores, who can resist a thick slice of rhubarb pie , the perfect balance of rhubarb-sour and sugar-sweet? But for simplicity, an easy cobbler recipe is the ticket, whether a 'plain' rhubarb cobbler or today's recipe, rhubarb and strawberry cobbler . BUSTED Many thanks to Maggie, a reader who makes her home in New York City on the top floor apartment of a building originally constructed in 1839 as a one-family house. Maggie's apartment runs due north to due south so the northern windows get no direct sun and southern windows and skylights get so much sun that anything short of a cactus would

Pantry with a Purpose: How to grow a few favorite fresh herbs at home, the pots, the soil, the planting. Everything you need to know about growing fresh herbs. It's a great way to save money and inspire summer meals. ~first posted 2008, updated 2012 & 2015~ ~ more recently updated recipes ~ Food prices are skyrocketing with no end in sight. This is the second post tackling the idea of saving money on groceries by – stay with me a minute, it's not entirely intuitive – by cooking more . The idea, you see, is to stop paying crazy-high prices for store-bought by making our own or in this case, growing our own. Now I know that fresh herbs are a luxury in many households, it's dried or nothing or maybe even nothing. But cooking at home is as much about eating better as eating less expensively . Fresh herbs add life to salads, vegetables, salad dressings, meat dishes, even desserts and drinks. In my grocery, small, plastic packets of fresh herbs are now $3 for a sma

How to cook and shock fresh asparagus to retain that beautiful bright green color and enhance the natural asparagus flavor for serving chilled. Plus how to make aioli, the classic sauce. Great for parties, buffets, composed salads. Real Food, Fresh & Seasonal. An Asparagus Classic. Scales from Small Plates to Large Platters. Potluck & Party Friendly. Low Carb. Low Fat. Weight Watchers Friendly. Naturally Gluten Free.

Say hello to the traditional Middle Eastern spread that's found on meze platters in Middle Eastern restaurants along with hummus, tabbouleh, olivada and other shareables. This one's homemade, no more than eggplant, garlic, lemon, tahini and a touch of fresh parsley. Low Carb. Weight Watchers Friendly. Not just vegan, Vegan Done Real . Naturally Gluten Free. Paleo. Whole30 Friendly. BACK IN 2008 What's Baba Ganoush, you ask? First, let's just put this out there, that if you like hummus, odds are high that you'll like Baba Ganoush. And if you love hummus but avoid legumes, Baba Ganoush is your new savior, it's like a vegan, low-carb hummus: eggplant substitutes for chickpeas. So what is Baba Ganoush, again? It's a simple purée of grilled or roasted eggplant mixed smooth with garlic, lemon juice, tahini and parsley. It's a healthy Middle Eastern spread or dip that's traditionally served with pita bread but is easy to use up in other ways too. We like

Pantry with a Purpose: How to stock your pantry with simple ingredients for making easy, delicious and economical homemade salad dressing recipes. Almost, not quite, but any day now, it will be salad season! Tender spring greens are soon to appear. The weather's turning warm and so we make our annual return to lighter, fresher and "greener" food. So here's my challenge to readers of A Veggie Venture and to salad lovers from all over: Never Buy Salad Dressing Again. Let's make it a hashtag! #NeverBuySaladDressingAgain! I'm here to help. Cookbooks and cooking magazines often suggest ingredients for a well-stocked pantry. But how many of us fill our pantries, then forget to empty them?! And we shouldn't. That's because "cooking from the pantry" is the best way to save money on groceries – at the same time avoiding the calories, additives, waste and inconvenience of carry-out, drive-through and frozen food. So let's stock our pantrie

Today's recipe: Milk. Vinegar. Sugar. No more. No oil! Low carb. Weight Watchers zero points. It gets no easier than this. When my brother-in-law visited over Christmas, he mentioned the salad dressing that his mother, a World War II German war bride, makes all the time. They call it 'German Salad Dressing'. Me, I'm tempted to dub it "salad dressing for dummies" because it has just three ingredients. Three ingredients. And it's got me to thinking. Why in the world do we buy bottles of salad dressing when it's this cheap and simple and tasty to make? So I'm launching a new series of occasional posts with collections of simple classic recipes for home cooks who want to feed their families economically and healthfully. Look for the first one tomorrow. I'm calling it " Never Buy Salad Dressing Again ". Who will take the challenge? FREE ICONS for BLOGGERS Share your love of fresh produce, whether from the farmers market, your own garden or

Today's vegetable recipe: Eggplant slices brushed with steak sauce and honey, then broiled and topped with Parmesan. Easy. Quick. Tasty. I love to chat up the produce guys at the grocery store. They're full of good tips. Just yesterday, one was unpacking a lug of gorgeous eggplant. "Do you ever get Japanese eggplant?" I asked, just curious. "Some times," he answered. "Do they sell?" I wondered. Nope. "But the globe eggplants are one of our best sellers." Really? This veggie evangelist had best catch up! There are several good eggplant recipes here -- but clearly, not enough. I grabbed a couple of eggplants, came home and straight-off made these for lunch -- using pantry ingredients, nothing more. They were just excellent, creamy on the inside, slightly crispy on the outside, lots of flavor. Score one for eggplant lovers, here's another great way to cook eggplant. While the 'Eggplant Steak' name suggests something meaty an