Blog Posts by RachaelRaymag.com

As I wrote at the start of this no-repeats challenge, one of my thoughts was to make a mid-week pizza, and it was love-at-first-sight when I saw our Artichoke, Tomato and Spinach Pizza recipe in the February issue. For a spinach-artichoke dip nut like me, this seemed like an awesome thing to try -- and it would help nudge me to buy more on-hand stuff that I could use to get inspired (kind of like the coconut milk did for the Red Curry, the lime mango chutney did for the Stuffed Pork Chops, the artichokes would do here).

My husband picked up refrigerated dough from the market this afternoon along with other groceries, and he mistakenly popped it in the freezer instead of the fridge once he got home. So here I thought my biggest "mess" was going to be that it didn't thaw right after being frozen for two hours, and I was going to have a seriously misshapen pie on my hands. Or that I was using up my ricotta from my Penne all Norma and some snacking mozzarella, because I was out of

If my mom taught me one thing about saving money at the grocery store, it was to keep your eye on the scanner while the cashier is ringing you up and to double-check your receipt before leaving the store*-and it's paid off many a time! I've definitely corrected my fair share of produce misidentification errors (excuse me, but those are the s---akes on sale, not the wild mushrooms that are $9 a pound!) and countless double charges. And then there are those times when something rings up for more than the advertised price and I have to stop the cashier and ask for a price check, which usually results in some eye-rolling on the part of the staff and other customers. But even in the face of such ridicule, I stand firmly behind demanding a price check to save a few bucks! After all, who can afford not to these days? Sorry, but those behind me will just have to wait while the employees confirm that there was indeed a sale and I am indeed entitled to the 50 cents, $1, $2 savings, etc!

Try these quick fixes from celebrity hairstylist Alyn Topper, of Bravo's Blowout.

1. Turn up the heat.
Tame any frizzy spots with a curling iron.

2. Take a dry shower.
Degrease hair by adding a little baby powder or dry shampoo (available at drugstores), then brush.

3. Make bangs behave.
Mist them with water; then, instead of brushing, blow-dry and use your fingers to flatten.


Still not working? Lift hair off your face for instant glamour. Rachael Ray's style pal, Gretta Monahan, suggests pulling a 2- to 3-inch section (use your eyebrow arches as markers) to the top of your head, leaving a little bump so it's not taut. Then, place the bobby pins in an "X" shape to secure. Finish with a shot of hairspray.

Illustrations by Aaron Meshon

MORE LIKE THIS
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Rach's own beauty secrets Q+A »

Claiming that one pizzeria stands above all others might seem like an impossibly big task. Crazy, even, Luckily, authors Ed Levine and Adam Kuban, who run the pizza blog Slice, were the right guys for the job. Taking a cue from the madness that strikes basketball fans each March, they scouted 64 pizzerias in 25 U.S. cities before slicing down the competition to the Sweet Sixteen below.

See the entire bracket of the 64 pizzerias »
Find out the winner of America's Best Pizzeria! »

FINAL FOUR: WEST COAST
Winner! Pizzeria Mozza, Los Angeles, mozza-la.com. Margherita pizza $13, serves 1
Mozza chef-partner Nancy Silverton was already legendary in L.A. for her work at La Brea Bakery. No wonder her crusts have all the chewiness and rich flavor of artisan bread. And when that base is topped with one of the inventive combinations of ingredients (the pizza with peppers, olives and oregano is especially good), you can't go wrong. Read more »

Runners up:

I'm starting to see a pattern here, on dinner #4 of my no-repeats challenge. It's kind of all about the sauce, isn't it? I've always been big on big flavors, but learning a few tricks on how to better incorporate them into my dishes -- cheese sauce for Mac and Gouda, curry sauce for last night's Red Curry -- this is definitely helping my dinners get out of their rut.

For dinner #4 I had lots of fun riffing on our Vegetable Red Curry recipe, which was on my list of things to try and new condiments to experiment with. I added shrimp and threw in whatever veggies were on hand: edamame (well, those I picked up just for this recipe, otherwise it was going to be frozen peas), mushrooms, scallions and cilantro leftover from the stuffed pork chops. Served it over some buckwheat noodles, which I'd never made before and always thought took tons of time to soak, cook, etc -- boy, was I wrong. They were as easy to make as whole wheat pasta, and now I've got another grain to add to my

If you've been following along with my no-repeats cooking challenge, you'll remember that my husband asked for pasta alla Norma in an attempt for us to try to eat vegetarian one night a week. (Saving money, reducing our impact on the planet, reducing our waistlines, etc.) And that's one way to bust out of my rut: not having to think about dinner in a "meat-veggies-sides" kind of way. I have loved looking at Rachael's End of Summer Penne alla Norma recipe since it was published last August, so once I figured out how I could adapt it to be Middle of February Penne alla Norma, I was in. I used a large can of whole, peeled tomatoes without the juice, tossed in dried herbs instead of fresh and upped the garlic to add more flavor that I was losing from the basil and mint. The dish looked it needed a little color once I was done, so I threw in a few handfuls of wilted baby spinach to give a little zip of green.

Here's how it looked in my dish:

Kind of like Rach's, huh? My

Another chance to scratch a new recipe off my list -- this one, mac and cheese, which as I wrote I'd never made before. What took so long? Maybe I was put off by the time that our very good friends came over for dinner, and I thought, I'll just throw some tortellini and ricotta and stuff in a baking dish and out'll come creamy, cheesy dinner. I can't remember what the other stuff was (milk? egg? breadcrumbs?) but I do remember our friends being superpolite while eating the kind of dried-out results. Or I guess I just thought that cheese sauce was really complicated. Now that dinner's done, I can say: It's not.

I'd had my eye on our Baked Macaroni and Gouda recipe for a while. I liked that it involved making a cheese sauce (new skill!), and I liked that it baked while I could put the baby to bed, after which we could come back to the kitchen and have a bubbling hot meal. And who can say no to Gouda?

I tried to follow the ingredients and directions exactly -- which is kind of

So I went to the grocery store with a sort-of list to figure out the next couple of meals and pick up what I needed. My list-making skills need a little help, though (like, I still don't organize it by aisle and I know it works much better that way!), and our store's not always stocked with everything. Plus I wasn't sure how many days I was going to be able to map out, so I didn't have an exact meal plan -- that's just not me, you know? I'm more of a what's-in-the-fridge kind of cook. Anyway, my husband was really psyched for dinner and about an hour before he goes, "What are we having?" and I blurted out, "Stuffed pork chops" and then was like, wait, what? I wasn't sure why I'd said that (it's on my tiny list of goals, but it's not something I was going to tackle first!) and then I thought, you know what, why back down. So I visited our Jasmine Rice-Stuffed Pork Chop recipe and started doing my mental swaps, thinking to what I'd learned from the food team.

Instead of the