Who isn’t busy these days? As much as I love to cook, I find myself rushing to throw together meals during the week after work, after the gym, before some evening plans, etc. And as busy as the evenings seem now, they are about to get a hundred times crazier in a few short months when we welcome a new baby into the household.  In order to not fall into the “let’s eat Chipotle again” or weekly pizza-ordering trap, I think it’s crucial to have a nice variety of super-fast, mostly-healthy meals that can be quickly pulled together from food that we often have around the house. It’s just as easy (…

Chefs at some of the best restaurants in the world have written cookbooks, allowing the home cooks to try their hand at re-creating famous dishes in their own kitchen. Cookbooks from names familiar to any Top Chef-viewer – Eric Ripert’s Le Bernadin: Four Star Simplicity,Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry Cookbook, David Chang’s Momofuku – line the shelves at bookstores, inviting yet intimidating, and providing to most a chance to experience food that isn’t right in their backyards. But the list isn’t limited to the Michelin-starred restaurants.   Locally popular and hidden gem restaurants …

Like many families, mine has a yearly cooking-baking tradition that has been going on for a long time. It started out as a Sunday morning activity for me and my mom, but as our family has grown, so has the bake-a-thon. My mother-in-law joined in a few years back, and when my brother got married, my new sister-in-law cheerfully joined us for the now daylong event. Nearly all of these recipes are kept on flour- and chocolate-stained papers in my mother's baking cabinet. We've been using many of these recipes since long before the Internet became the world's largest cookbook. Their appearance …

At first glance, Thanksgiving doesn't seem like the most vegetarian-friendly holiday. And sometimes it isn't, when bacon makes it into nearly every dish and even the green beans on the table aren't safe. Vegetarians usually have few options on Thanksgiving--make a meal out of the safe sides (cranberries, potatoes with no gravy, green beans if they haven't been baconed, maybe corn or salad). Unless you are hosting the meal or have a super-accommodating host, the stuffing is usually off-limits. Main course? Maybe a tofurkey, that football-shaped faux meat wonder sliced into neat rounds. It …

Welcome to Getting Fresh! I'm a Ferndale-based food blogger (when I'm not writing for Patch, you can find me at Tuesdays with Angela: Making Food for Friends). I'll be bringing you a monthly seasonal recipe, tips on where to find the ingredients, and the costs of the ingredients in your local stores. I'm here to show you it's easy to make good food using ingredients found right here in our community. My focus will be on vegetarian recipes, but whenever possible I'll give you tips on how you can incorporate or substitute meat into the recipe. On the other side of the spectrum, I'll suggest …