There is no question that my love language is culinary. Sick in bed? I'll bring over pho! Just had a baby? I'll be over with a pan of Brown Butter Pumpkin Mac and Cheese. But to me, there is no food more potent with love than a freshly roasted whole chicken with herbs and garlic.

As it roasts, its heavenly scent fills your kitchen, wafting down the halls (and perhaps even into the apartment next door), letting everyone know that something special is being cooked. It's simple, but the very definition of wholesome, and goes with just about anything. 

This isn't the first chicken I've roasted, but it may be the simplest preparation. Here, I blend the classic French dried herb combination, Herbes de Provence (a mixture of savory, marjoram, rosemary, thyme, oregano and lavender) with chopped garlic, salt and pepper, and slather it thickly over a beautiful whole chicken.

 

 

The herb-garlic mixture does double duty, creating a crust that helps hold moisture in, while also infusing the chicken with all that herbaceous, herbal flavor.   

The product is a wonderfully juicy, rustic chicken that should be served with simple sides that complement, but don't overwhelm it. Roasted potatoes, a creamy but simply flavored risotto or sauteed cannellini beans would be a great option, along with something sturdy and green, like massaged kale or roasted rapini.

So, instead of chocolate or roses, consider giving a freshly roasted chicken this Valentines Day. Not only does it kind of look like a heart, but you can't make soup broth out of leftover chocolates and roses.

Look, I don't care about football.

When I was a kid, my dad would scream at the TV on Sunday afternoons, while the blue guys and the red guys wrassled each other for the ball, and every now and then he would call me into the living room to show me a particularly great wrassle-ball interaction.

"Watch this, sweetie!" he'd say to me as an instant replay flashed across the screen. "This is beautiful!"

And I'd watch, as the red guys wrassled the blue guys, failing to see any of the beauty he mentioned whatsoever. 

"Cool, Dad. Can I go back to my room now?"

As I'd leave the living room, I'd pass my mom in the kitchen, who, inevitably, had also just been forced to watch something inexplicably "beautiful" on the screen. We'd nod at each other, like longtime office co-workers, weary of the same clueless boss.



These days, the few times a year I watch football, I do it for one of two reasons.

A) The other people watching:

Or B) the food. Obviously.

The last time I watched an entire game, it was because I love the people who were also watching, but also because it was a great opportunity to make pizza dough-based pretzels and a creamy, unctuous beer-cheddar sauce. Beer and cheddar have such an affinity for one another--the sour punch of the beer plays gorgeously with the nutty tang of the cheddar (particularly the sharp variety). The combination of the two invokes the umami-must-not-stop-eating-this-deliciousness effect, which is reason enough for me.

As I stirred the simple sauce on the stove (just browned onions in a roux with Guinness stout, cheddar and mustard), I couldn't help but think of how perfect this sauce would be for a mac and cheese. Beer and cheese are a dream combination, and tender pasta seemed like the perfect vehicle for them both.

So today I made just that. Just watch. It's beautiful.

Note: Feel free to skip the pasta and just use the cheese sauce as a dip for pretzels, breadsticks or chips.

Hard pretzels don't really do much for me. Sure, they're oft-lauded as a great healthy snack, but honestly, I'd rather have a bowl of kale. Even the peanut butter-filled kind, while marginally better than plain ones, leave me unsatisfied--not to mention thirsty.

But soft, buttery pretzels, hot out of the oven, with a lightly crisp exterior and a chewy, yet puffy interior are a totally different story. Serve them with  tangy mustard or creamy cheese sauce for the ultimate game night/ballgame/study session snack (don't forget the cold beer!). You could probably even get away with serving them (plus soup and maybe a light salad) for an easy supper.

Most importantly, they're super-simple to make, using pizza dough (check out my latest book for more on this glorious product!). Make it yourself, or pick it up at the store and go from there.

Bring this to the Halloween party instead, and let the scariest thing in the room be Mike from Accounting's ill-advised Miley-Cyrus-at-the-VMA's costume--not scary fake cheese dip.

Goblins, ghosts and witches are scary, sure. But you know what really freaks me out? Super-processed cheese.

WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? I ask you. Why bother with what is, as far as I'm concerned, basically melted, reshaped plastic that is scientifically edible, but culinarily criminal? Why would you do that, when there are so many other delicious cheeses available? The argument that processed cheese is great because it's smooth and melty does nothing to convince me. Any cheese is smooth and melty if you treat it right.

Processed cheese is lower in fat, you say? Well, yeah. That's because it's not food. 

But this queso, my friends, is totally real food, that also happens super melty and gooey, the way queso ought to be. The help of a little canned pureed pumpkin (or fresh roasted and home-pureed, if you have that kind of time) makes it supple and creamy, while also adding to it a healthy dose of fiber and vitamins A and C--and zero fat. I add chopped onions and fresh jalapeño for extra flavor, but you could swap in canned green chiles for the jalapeño, if you prefer.

So please, I beg of you, just say no to the old Rotel-and-Velveeta combo. This is so much better. Bring this to the Halloween party instead, and let the scariest thing in the room be Mike from Accounting's ill-advised Miley-Cyrus-at-the-VMA's costume--not scary fake cheese dip. 

First of all, it's time to stop with the tomato soup from the can (or box). It's so absurdly easy to make it from scratch, you'll wonder why you haven't been doing it this way the whole time. It's always delicious with canned tomatoes, but why not take advantage of the end-of-summer tomato sales at your local farmers market? On Sunday, I scored 2 pounds of overripe Early Girl tomatoes for a mere $2. All they needed was a quick peel (just drop them into boiling water for a few seconds, then slip off the peel and use your fingers to scoop out as many seeds as you can), and they took my soup to an extra level of awesome.

Here, I borrow a soup-topping technique generally associated with French Onion soup, except I skip the classic crouton and opt to top my soup with straight cheese before hitting it with a quick broil. The top of the cheese gets brown and crusty while the bottom oozes into the soup, thickening it and melting all over your spoon in the best possible way. 

It's a filling, comforting soup that just happens to also be low-carb and gluten-free.