In Love with Lavender

By Katie Barreira

Your immediate associations with lavender may include eye pillows, scented dresser drawers and massage oil. But the fragrant buds are also a standard culinary herb most commonly known for its starring role in the classic French spice blend, herbes de Provence.

It dawned on me during a recent visit to the Lavender by the Bay farm in Long Island, NY, where the violet stalks are in bloom, that lavender buds are a versatile and underutilized ingredient. So I picked up a sack of dried culinary lavender to tinker with at home…my suitcase still smells fabulous, but that’s nothing compared to the warm, sweet scent wafting from the oven.

Now, no matter how inspired you might be to cook with these fragrant florets, don’t run to your dresser drawer and rip open the sachet perfuming your skivvies. There are specific varieties of lavender that are good for cooking, sold as “culinary lavender.”

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How to Cook an Artichoke

By David Hu

When we were kids, my family would occasionally drive down to Monterey, California, for a day trip to get out of the city. On the drive down we’d pass through Castroville, the self-proclaimed “Artichoke Center of the World.” We’d always make a stop at the Giant Artichoke Restaurant for fried artichoke hearts – a tradition I still follow to this day.

I love artichokes – and not just the fried kind. While many people think of artichokes as a special occasion food, I beg to differ. Artichokes are really low maintenance. All you need are a few prepping tips, less than 5 minutes to get them ready for the pot and about 35 minutes to steam. Use cooked artichokes as an appetizer or a side dish.

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Movie Night Caramel Corn

By Marilyn Hunter

Ben’s love of popcorn began when he was a toddler and we lived in San Francisco. We popped popcorn every Thursday night when his best friend Sebastian would come to play. It’s a tradition we continue even though Sebastian now lives in London and we live in Los Angeles.

Our boys’ affection for popcorn continues to grow as they discovered kettle and caramel corn while strolling through our neighborhood farmers’ market on a recent Sunday afternoon. They liked it so much we were inspired to try it at home.

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Tracey’s Scrambled Omelet

By Katie Barreira

I was raised on public television episodes of The French Chef and thus, saw Julia Child shake an omelet into submission long before I landed in culinary school. The instructor started us off with the training wheels’ version of Julia’s technique that has been widely adopted as the home cook’s standard omelet procedure. That is, to push the cooked edges of egg towards the center of the pan so that the uncooked portions can run onto the surface of the hot pan.

Some combination of the push and shake served me just fine, until I tested Tracey Seaman’s classic omelet recipe for the May 2011 issue of Everyday With Rachael Ray Magazine (on stands now with loads of great ideas for filling your omelet!).

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Peel ‘n’ Eat

By Andrew Hunter

We discovered something amazing recently that compels the boys to eat foods they would normally shun. It’s both simple and surprising, but if they peel it, they’ll eat it. This miraculous discovery came when we realized they would eat a pound of edamame in one sitting. So we applied the same logic to shrimp and watched with anticipation and voilà!

With summer on the horizon and the sun shining brighter into the evening, we set up shrimp boils on the patio table. The boys peel and eat shrimp, a critter they previously refused. We peel and eat with them together sometimes and other times I peel a bunch for shrimp cocktail, which is one of Marilyn’s favorites.

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