The Recipe: What a quick supper! Just cook the beef in the slow cooker (no browning!) with pantry ingredients, then toss together a quick sauté of vegetables and black beans. Add some diced avocado and sour cream. Gorgeous!The Conversation: The lesson I've learned from chefs about pantry ingredients. This recipe is so quick and easy
that I'm adding it to a special collection of easy summer recipes
published every summer since 2009.
Watch for new 'summer easy' recipes all summer long.
With a free e-mail subscription, you'll never miss a one!
As of this month, I’ve written 175 weekly columns for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrangling home-cook friendly recipes from restaurants. Column by column, the weeks fly by, the years too. And week after week, I fall in love with a brand-new place, its chef, its food and most especially its story.Every week, that one place is my new favorite. I want to eat there! I want everyone else to eat there too! The next week? It happen…

The Recipe: An oh-so-easy but seductive zucchini salad, made 'sexy' with spiral zucchini noodles which are taking the world by storm as a low-carb, whole-food pasta-like but grain-free noodle. Low carb, just 1 Weight Watchers point, gluten-free, paleo. Not just vegan, Vegan Done Real. Did I mention irresistible?The Conversation: My discovery of new-style Finnish food, thanks to Finnish food blogger and cookbook author Mari Moilanen. This recipe is so quick and easy
that I'm adding it to a special collection of easy summer recipes
published every summer since 2009.
Watch for new 'summer easy' recipes all summer long.
With a free e-mail subscription, you'll never miss a one!
Trends pass, sensibilities change, styles go out of date. Cuisines too are less than timeless, constantly evolving, melding, shape-shifting. Take my experience with Finnish food. Sure, I lived in Finland and I l-o-v-e-d the food, especially the fish, the cheese and yogurt, the pastries. Bu…