Trader Joes, how do I love thee. I don’t care that you’re Aldi in a fancy dress. In fact, I love that you’re Aldi in a fancy dress and your delicious foods are priced accordingly. And I do love thee. Let me count the ways.

First there’s their Garlic Naan, in the freezer section for < [...]

My dearest friend Tracy is not a shortcut chef. In fact, were I a superhero, she would be my nemesis. She bakes. From scratch. She makes sauces and breads and even makes her own damn brown sugar. But this is one of the many reasons I love her. Her food is always amazing and nobody [...]

The Bandai Futomaki Maker has arrived, and as expected it’s kind of fun, kind of a pain in the ass, and going to feature quite the learning curve, but it was a start. We made the “it’s almost a heart” sushi (the purple in the picture) and figured out how to make it actually a [...]

This Mother’s Day we didn’t get together with family, since we spent the day before at my husband’s college graduation surrounded by both our families. After joining some friends for an absolutely amazing brunch at Over Easy—where I had the smoked salmon omelet and became inspired to host a brunch with friends, for Mother’s Day [...]

CONFESSION: I hate eating at Italian restaurants. Italian food is one of my favorites to eat, but whenever I order traditional Italian at a restaurant I tend to think “I can make this better.”
To make restaurant quality meals shortcut-style I love the frozen pastas at my local Butera Market, and this cheese stuffed manicotti is [...]

This Sunday dinner was my first attempt at cooking a leg of lamb. With the helpful advice of my friend Tracy I made a delicious herb marinade. I started with the leftover mint from the chilaquiles and chopped it finely. To this I added dried basil and rosemary and 6 chopped cloves of garlic, salt [...]

Lured by the promise of sushi in the shapes of flowers, bunnies, and bears, my husband and I were transfixed when this toy was shown on a random blip about the Tokyo Toy Show. We immediately sought it out online and bought one.
Sure, it’s probably not going to be anywhere as easy to make bear [...]

There was something about the Chilaquiles Verdes (think Mexican lasagna) recipe I saw on Daisy Cooks that inspired me to try it from scratch before I attempt to design some shortcuts around it. And believe me, from the fresh salsa verde to frying my own tortillas, this was a labor and time-intensive dish. There are [...]

Perhaps my favorite part of shortcut cooking is calling a dish something more impressive than what it actually is. But Velveeta cheese sauce just doesn’t have the same ring to it as Jalapeño Cream Sauce.
This meal was thrown together on a whim. My husband craved Velveeta chili dip the previous night, leaving us with a [...]

CONFESSION: I hate prepping tofu. I’m a huge tofu fan but extremely picky about density and texture. That’s why, whenever we visit Mitsuwa, our favorite Asian grocer, we load up on their fried tofu. Mitsuwa has large slabs of already fried extra firm tofu with vegetables embedded in it that take all the work out [...]

An easy recipe for shortcut Chicken Pad Thai using a prepared sauce.

How to make delicious little balls of cholesterol… seriously, YUM.