Make this Stew in Less than 30 Minutes, from Start to Finish

By David Hu

I love to cook, but sometimes I just don’t have the time or the energy to do much. Stews tend to be a great answer to this problem because they don’t require much active cooking. But usually they take hours on the stove and aren’t the instant solution.

Today’s video recipe is a hearty bean and pasta stew. Once you get all the ingredients cut and measured, just throw them in a pot, let everything simmer, sit back and you’ll be eating in 15 minutes. Since most of the ingredients are primarily pantry items, you should be able to skip a trip to the supermarket.

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Halloween Spaghetti Casserole

By Marilyn Hunter

I don’t know about your house on Halloween night, but ours is hectic, especially this year with it falling on a Monday! This means by the time we get home from school, changed into costumes, go through the usual hysterics of two excited boys, then settle down for photographs before venturing into the jack o’ lantern-lit streets, there’s no time for preparing dinner. So I dug out a tried-and-true baked spaghetti casserole recipe that can be made on either Saturday or Sunday and then pulled from the fridge and reheated about an hour before serving.

It’s funny how memories work, but Andrew’s cousin Chipper sent him an email a few days ago asking if he remembered how Gramma Hunter used to make her baked spaghetti casserole. While this recipe isn’t hers, it is in her spirit that we offer this version to you. Gramma Hunter loved all holidays, mostly because the whole family would come to her house for food and fun.

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B,L,D,D Apple Fondue

By Katie Barreira

Whether you’re picking from the tree or the produce aisle, apples are in abundance and fondue is a fun and easy way to eat ‘em up. So dunk your favorite variety into a cauldron of steaming sauce for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert!

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Fall for Stew

By Katie Barreira

Autumn is the perfect time of year for a savory, tummy-warming bowl of stew. As the weather grows colder and the days shorter, I find myself arriving home from work feeling hungrier and less inclined to cook. And thus, Sundays have become Stew Sundays. Thirty minutes of prep, a couple hours of “set it and forget it” cooking during football and I’ve got dinner covered for at least two nights of the coming week.

Can’t imagine eating the same thing a few nights in a row? No problem; stews are masters of disguise. On Sunday, it’s a steaming bowl, hot off the stove, with a hunk of crusty bread for mopping the rich broth. Monday, the cold meat is shredded and heated with some of the veggies and served on rolls with slaw, for a pulled pork sandwich. And by Wednesday, your thickened stew dresses up as ragu, ladled over soft, creamy polenta or tossed into pasta.

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Chinese Noodles

By Andrew Hunter

There’s a Chinese noodle house east of L.A. called Din Tai Fung. Their specialty is dumplings and boy, are they special – glutinous rice shaomai, green melon and shrimp bundles, and tiny soup dumplings bobbing in clear chicken broth, to name a few of our favorites. Din Tai, as we call it, is a regular and possibly favorite stop on our weekend rotation of dim sum houses.

The place is sleek, clean and crowded with a large tinted kitchen window that gives a shady peek at cooks working shoulder to shoulder rolling noodles, stuffing discs of dough and crimping them into round, crescent and purse-shaped dumplings.

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