By Tanya Wenman Steel, Epicurious.com
Any parent will agree that the world's toughest food critics are children. This "aptitude" for culinary criticism is particularly evident with school-day lunches. You want to give your mini gourmand a balanced meal, one filled with double-duty foods that provide energy and nutrition while keeping junior sated and satisfied. But getting your little loved one to actually eat a wholesome homemade lunch can be as difficult as getting him or her to log off and unplug.
Related: Healthy recipes from Epicurious.com
To ensure that junior's power lunch doesn't go straight into the trash (and your time and money with it) or get traded for something a whole lot less nutritious, parents need to approach this nagging problem with a strategy. For years, I've come up with creative, healthy ideas for my kids' brown-bag lunches, and so when it came time to write my cookbook, Real Food for Healthy Kids, my coauthor, venerated food professional Tracey Seaman, and I
Blog Posts by Epicurious.com
Healthy and Delicious Back-to-School Lunches
By Epicurious.com | Back To School – Thu, Jul 14, 2011 7:12 PM EDTFrom learning the basics to discovering the world's cuisines, these are the books every home cook should own.
Read More »from Healthy Beach Food Recipes and Tips
By Epicurious.com
If you're like us, you spend a lot of time dreaming of the beaches of Cozumel or Cape Cod, where you'll while away the afternoons with your toes in the sand and a tropical drink at your side. But even those of us stuck at home can still get into vacation mode by slowing down to enjoy the lazy days of summer-and sampling the world's best beach food. From grilled fish tostadas to slimmed-down banana splits, our recipe collection will send you to the seaside, even if you're just picnicking by the pool.
Related: Healthy recipes from Epicurious.com
Summer should always be a break from routine, but there's no need to stop eating well. While those people on the next beach blanket are gorging on greasy French fries and double-chocolate shakes, you can indulge in refreshing ceviche, a tropical shake (make it even healthier by swapping the whole milk in the recipe for skim and omitting or cutting back on the sugar), or an easy, low-cal paella that'll transport you and yourDoes Healthy Eating Have to Be Expensive?
By Epicurious.com | Shine Food – Mon, Jul 11, 2011 7:16 PM EDT
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By Megan O. Steintrager, Epicurious.com
Earlier this week, Tanya Steel wrote in the Epi-Log about MyPlate, the USDA's recent remake of the Food Pyramid. She commented that the revamp leaves off important dietary words such as "lean," as in "lean protein," and "low-fat" as in "low-fat dairy." In response to the post, Meg140 wrote in the comments section: "Lean meat is great. And expensive. Fresh vegetables are great. And expensive. And not always available. Extra virgin olive oil on your salad is great. And more expensive than your standard vegetable oil."
Related: Healthy recipes from Epicurious.com
The commenter brings up a legitimate issue. We've all seen articles about how much cheaper it can be to eat fast food than fresh food, for example. But there are also promising initiatives to make healthy, fresh food more affordable and accessible. Gourmet Live's Kelly Senyei -- who recently wrote about how "extreme couponing" can lead to unhealthy eating -- just sent me an article fromBeat the Heat: No-Bake Recipes and Tips from Epicurious
By Epicurious.com | Work + Money – Fri, Jul 8, 2011 6:04 PM EDT
Read More »from Beat the Heat: No-Bake Recipes and Tips from Epicurious
By Lauren Salkeld; recipes by Lauren Chattman, Epicurious.com
Hot weather is ideal for all kinds of activities - swimming, suntanning, picnics - but it makes for less-than-desirable baking conditions. No matter how much you want to make dessert, just thinking about turning on the oven can induce perspiration. Thankfully, there's an easy solution: icebox desserts, which come in a variety of styles, from fresh fruit trifles to no-bake cheesecakes to ice cream terrines. Instead of using the oven, icebox desserts are finished in the refrigerator or freezer and rely on key ingredients such as whipped cream and gelatin. Sure, a few varieties do require that the oven be turned on, but only for a few minutes to bake the cookie crust, which is so yummy it's well worth the momentary heat.
These desserts also have an inherent flexibility. Because nothing is actually baked, you have the freedom to change ingredients and customize your creations. A strawberry dessert, for instance, can just asEpicurious's Favorite Chilled Foods and Helpful Tips
By Epicurious.com | Shine Food – Wed, Jul 6, 2011 5:59 PM EDTAs the weather gets warmer, especially when it's hot and humid, the last place you want to be is in a hot kitchen. But unless you're willing to eat foods that are packaged and don't require any cooking, you'll eventually have to make friends with your kitchen appliances. Some of the recipes below re
By Joanne Camas; additional reporting by Sarah Kagan, Epicurious.com
It seems that every year there are more and more food scares-recalls of popular products, outbreaks of food poisoning at restaurants. News reports are full of experts cautioning people on how to avoid food-borne illness, but the information can be confusing, overwhelming, and sometimes unrealistic. Do you really need to cook that steak until it's well-done to be safe? Can you cut mold off cheese and then eat the rest of it?
We sorted through the conflicting advice on these questions and many others in order to bring you the real deal on food safety.
Related: Our Ultimate Grilling and Barbecue Guide
These rules apply across the board to all types of food:- Shop Smart
- Avoid Cross-Contamination
By Esther Sung, Epicurious.com
Salads have come a long way. In the past, they were merely appetizers but today, salads are much more colorful, tasty, and substantial, and often served as entrées unto themselves. With different salad greens such as mâche, mizuna, and escarole gaining mainstream acceptance, salads now show great diversity. Liven up the flavor by adding fruits, nuts, and edible flowers as well as popular staples such as potato, tuna, and chicken.
For some more information on different salad greens, check out our visual guide to salad greens. And to learn to make a vinaigrette use our technique video.
See more salad recipes at Epicurious.com
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Read More »from Weight-Loss Apps for Food Lovers
By Megan O. Steintrager, Epicurious.com
Users of the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry know there are hundreds of apps that promise to help you lose weight easily and quickly. Unfortunately, many health and fitness apps assume that you're willing to live on either fast food or cabbage; we're not sure which is worse. To find the best diet apps for the typical Epicurious member-somebody who loves to eat and generally prefers food made from scratch with few processed ingredients-we tested some of the most popular weight-loss apps in the Apple and Android markets, many of which are also available for the BlackBerry. (Some apps have iPad versions, and as tablets in general gain popularity, more apps will no doubt be developed for the platform.) Of course, you can already search thousands of healthy recipes using the Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List app, but for those who want to go the extra mile for weight loss, we deemed the five apps in this chart to be the cream-or perhaps the skimSchool's Out for Summer: Teaching Kids to Keep the Kitchen Clean
By Epicurious.com | Summer Time Fun – Wed, Jun 22, 2011 8:51 PM EDT
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By Tanya Steel, Epicurious.com
"No more pencils. No more books. No more teacher's dirty looks," snarls Alice Cooper in the infamous song. But my kids got dirty looks yesterday--from me. I got home at 7 from work; it was the last day of seventh grade and my kids had two hours on their own in the house, in between school and my father coming up to "teensit."
I had charged my 13-year-old-twin boys with keeping the house neat, and making themselves a snack when they got home. Well, you know a snack for teen boys means essentially emptying the contents of the pantry, refrigerator, and freezer into their bellies, and that's just what they did.
See also: Our Ultimate Grilling and Barbecue Guide
Milk and milk droplets were on the counter, tortilla-chip crumbs were all over the kitchen floor, chicken salad was smeared near the light fixture, chocolate cake bits had landed on the carpet near the Play Station equipment, and the microwave door was ajar. It was, in a word, a disaster zone. After
