• Chicken Meatballs
    Food

    Chicken Meatballs with Wilted Greens and Bacon

    Whether you grew up eating Italian meatballs simmered in a slow-cooked tomato sauce or the smaller Swedish style ones served with a rich gravy, you know how perfectly those dishes warm us from the inside out. These baked chicken meatballs with wilted greens and bacon are equally warming. I would say they are closer to Italian style with their ample amounts of garlic, Parmesan cheese, and parsley, a trinity certainly deserving of a name in the same way that carrot, onion, and celery collectively earned the term mirepoix. Made with ground chicken, baked, then tossed with wilted greens and crispy bits of bacon, these meatballs are best served with a…

  • Maple Pumpkin Crumble
    Baking

    Maple Pumpkin Crumble

    Satisfy your autumn cravings with a new take on the seasonal fruit crumble. The crumb layer that tops this maple pumpkin dessert is tasty, generous, and made without a bit of butter. As for the filling, it’s sweetened only with maple syrup and much lighter than a traditional pumpkin filling. If you’re like me and enjoy sweets on the regular, seasonal crumbles are probably high on your list of go-to desserts. From time to time, they need a little shake up though. That’s where the olive oil based crumb and lighter approach to pumpkin come into play. As you know from my chocolate chip olive oil muffins and some dessert…

  • Living

    Tea Drinking

    My poem “Tea Drinking” has been published in Juked, and I’m honored that the editors have given it such a good home and header – [kiss and tell]. If you’ve read my poems or participated in one of my poetry workshops, you may be familiar with this form of my writing already. Often I pepper Thirsty Radish with lines of poetry or simply my own prose bending toward the poetic, but sometimes a particular ache or detail, even the path of language itself, leads to a poem such as this one. I’m so happy to share these published pieces with you. Subscribe for recipes, ideas and special announcements delivered straight…

  • Strawberry Tomato Bruschetta
    Living

    Labor Day Celebration Ideas

    We have weeks of summer left, yet Labor Day signals a return of sorts. Little ones get tucked into their fluffy beds a bit earlier. Colleagues come back from their last beach vacation and quicken the pace of work. Even sunlight itself, which seemed endless some days, is meeting the streetlights while we watch. If summer is about ripening berries, September is about the few left to find, making Labor Day celebrations a time to savor what we cherish most about the season. As you entertain family and friends, or take a moment to relax, here are my tips on how to make the most of the holiday. Serve and…

  • Broccolini in Sweet and Sour Sauce
    Food

    Broccolini in Sweet and Sour Sauce

    While its name suggests that it’s a diminutive form of a common vegetable, broccolini is a hybrid of broccoli and the Chinese vegetable gai lan. With longer stalks and smaller florets, broccolini takes a more delicate shape on the dinner plate than broccoli, yet has a robust flavor that stands up well to a sweet and sour sauce with a bit of spiciness. On its own, this recipe makes a hearty vegetarian dish, and when served as a side, it never seems like an afterthought. In place of the refined sugar and ketchup that often make their way into sweet and sour sauce, I rely on honey, tamarind, tomato paste,…