The post Alex Snodgrass Proves That Health and Flavor Can Go Hand in Hand appeared first on Cooking 4 All.
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(@thedefineddish)But healthy meals need not be bland! In fact, they can be full of flavor with the added bonus of being light on calories. Alex Snodgrass will show you how it’s done. The face behind the highly successful food blog, The Defined Dish, Snodgrass offers simple healthy recipes that are in line with Whole30/Paleo diets.
But scrolling through her Instagram page, you might actually forget that Snodgrass puts an emphasis on healthy ingredients. “I am from Texas and us Texans like big bold flavors,” jokes Snodgrass on her website. “So I never skimp on flavors with my healthy dishes. They’re hearty, healthy, and freaking delicious! However, it’s also all about balance for me.” In true Texan spirit, there’s also the occasional super indulgent dish, so you don’t have to feel like you’re missing out on your favorite foods.
Big on flavor, Snodgrass’ tip for beginners is to lean into salt and pepper. “You’ve got to use the salt and pepper,” she noted once in an interview with USA Today. “Like, when cooking a soup, it’s not just adding it at the end.”
Snodgrass stresses that salt and pepper should be added in layers. “Like when you’re sautéing your vegetables in the beginning, just to make sure that you add a little bit of salt there so that it’s layered in there and it’s not just on the top, just sitting there and it doesn’t really flavor the dish.” Salt, says Snodgrass, brings out a lot of flavors.
Naturally, there’s also an emphasis on vegetables in her recipes. A recent favorite of hers is zucchini. “My new favorite way to eat all the summer zucchini: Grilled Zucchini with Calabrian Chiles, Herbed Goat Cheese and Pepitas!” wrote Snodgrass on Instagram. “This is such a great side dish with grilled fish, chicken or steak BUT it’s also a super fun summer appetizers!”
Another benefit of healthy eating is that the whole family can get on board, which makes mealtimes a time of growth and frienship. “I’ve always loved to share food with people, and I think it’s one of those things that brings people together: your family, your friends, and so many different cultures together,” says Snodgrass. “It’s really nice to be able to share on a wide scale and put healthy and delicious dinners on other family’s tables so they can enjoy each other with my food.”
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]]>The post Michaela Vais Might Just Convince You to Go Meatless appeared first on Cooking 4 All.
]]>“I want to spread the vegan message and inspire people from all around the world with my vegan recipes,” she exclaimed in an interview with Spoon University. “Eating plants is not a sacrifice, it’s a pleasure and a conscious choice to honor your body, mind, and soul.”
According to Vais, her most favorite recipe and one of her most popular ones (with hundreds of raving reviews) is her easy vegan cheese sauce. “I was really a ‘cheese addict’ in the past and therefore I had to create a recipe for vegan cheese which tastes great and is easy to make,” she explains, noting that this recipe specifically has been a game-changer.
A vegeterian by the age of six, Vais adopted a vegan lifestyle in 2011, and proceeded to open her now massively successful vegan blog, in 2016. A food stylist, recipe creator, and author, she describes herself as an intuitive cook, with a love for experimentation in the kitchen.
“At first, it was a challenge for me to go vegan, but after reading more and more about veganism, watching dozens of documentaries and learning about the dairy industry (and egg industry) it was actually pretty easy,” says Vais. “Going vegan was the best decision in my life and I haven’t regretted it.”
If you’re opting for a meatless diet but don’t know where to start, we recommend heading to her blog and accompanying Instagram page. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!
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]]>The post Deb Perelman Promotes Unfussy Cooking—And We’re All For It! appeared first on Cooking 4 All.
]]>According to Perelman, you won’t find in her recipes any mention of pretentious ingredients such as truffle oil and Himalayan pink salt. What you can expect to find in her recipes is a conversational tone and blunt humor that make the cooking process all the more approachable (in a recent post about corn kernels she writes “this is my platonic ideal of a corn fritter”; in another, she stresses that “yes, we absolutely need a recipe for a cream cheese pound cake in our lives”).
Using the same cheeky tone, Perelman promotes The Smitten Kitchen as “the place to find your new favorite thing to cook.” On her website, she describes her work as “Fearless cooking from a tiny kitchen in New York City.”
With over 14 years of blogging experience, Perelman’s kitchen has a rich archive that includes over 100 salad recipes, a lot of comfort foods stepped up a bit (things like bread and birthday cakes made entirely from scratch), and tutorials on everything from how to poach an egg to how to make tart doughs that don’t shrink up on you.
But in an interview with A Cup of Jo Perelman stressed that her number one tip to beginners is to start small—find your one specialty and stick to it: “There’s this idea people have that ‘I need to learn to cook,’ but just pick one thing,” she notes. “Learn to roast chicken or learn to make a great pasta sauce. And focus on the things you can’t get good versions of. The delivery you order and it tastes like trash? Cook that!”
With over 1.5 million followers on Instagram, Perelman’s advice has clearly found an approving audience. Join the hype!
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]]>The post Consider Yourself a Real Foodie? Follow Tieghan Gerard on Instagram appeared first on Cooking 4 All.
]]>A foodie through and through, the secret ingredient to Gerard’s cooking (as cliche as it may sound) is love. According to the seasoned blogger, her recipes are inspired by the people and places she loves most, with the goal to make mealtime a happier time.
Seeing as she comes from a large family, this makes perfect sense. “I am one of seven kids, so my parents had their hands full with my brothers and me,” Gerard told All Sorts Of. “We wouldn’t eat until nine or ten at night.” Wanting to tame some of these chaotic meals, Gerard took to cooking by the age of 14.
“One night I just decided I was making dinner,” she recalls. “I think I made a Rachel Ray recipe and everyone loved it. I’ve been cooking for friends and family ever since.” The love of cooking was hence tied with this positive experience, and seeing other people’s hearty reactions made the hard work worthwhile. “I love to cook for people, seeing their reactions is so rewarding!” says Gerard.
These days, her cooking and recipes are still very much tied to family mealtimes. Gerard’s house—a converted horse barn that was designed entirely around her lifestyle—provides the perfect backdrop to her passion-turned-full-time job. “It’s where I shot my first cookbook, and where I spend my days experimenting with new recipes, photographing my creations, feeding my family, and making one giant mess in the process,” she explains.
Recent recipe highlights we’re dying to recreate include her Strawberry Pink Drink. “When everyone around me was carrying a pretty pink drink, an idea hit and the homemade ‘pink drink’ was created,” writes Gerard on her Instagram page, explaining that the drink is a version of the Starbucks favorite, but healthier and made with double the strawberry, açaí, and extra creaminess. “It’s so creamy, it’s almost milkshake-like,” she writes. “This is good you guys. trust me, make it a home.” Oh, we shall!
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]]>The post Opening a Food Blog is No Piece of Cake! Lindsay Ostrom Will Help You Out appeared first on Cooking 4 All.
]]>Lindsay Ostrom of Pinch of Yum is one of those food-blogger-turned-mentors. Based in Saint Paul, MN where she shares a home with her husband Bjork and their dog Sage, like most foodies, she took to blogging as a hobby (her main job being a fourth-grade teacher). But what started out as a casual hobby for nights and weekends, would blossom into a viral phenomenon.
Part of Pinch of Yum’s initial charm is it’s down-to-earth approach to cooking. The website offers a huge range of recipes that are specially designed for real, actual, every day life, with a focus on real foods and healthy recipes. And with some one million (!) followers on Instagram, the blog’s recipe for success seems to have worked.
These days, alongside their recipes, Pinch of Yum offers resources and sound advice to other aspiring food bloggers. “Over the last 10+ years of working on Pinch of Yum, we’ve learned a ton about growing and monetizing blogs,” the website reads. The site now includes resources, strategies, and advice around growing a blog and a presence online.
“For other bloggers, it’s not just a food blog, but it can be a teaching resource of how you can grow your blog,” Ostrom further explained in an interview with Hot Chocolate Hits.
Ostrom’s most important advice: don’t do it for the money. “Do it for the love of food and the love of blogging!” she told Rachel Cooks. “There is definitely money to be made, but it’s just so rare to get that right out of the gate. You need to be willing to work for free for a while, so do it for the love!”
Another good tip: invest in a good camera, or just learn the camera you have as best as you can and keep practicing. According to Ostrom, the initial hook for people is going to be the image so you might as well put some effort into it.
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]]>The post Looking for Some Cooking Inspiration? Jessica Merchant’s Got Your Back! appeared first on Cooking 4 All.
]]>“I test most of my recipes at least once, but by no means claim to be a culinary genius,” admits Merchant, in a bio published on her website. Indeed, with no formal culinary training, Merchant is completely self-taught, which also makes her approach to cooking more down to earth. “My first priority is to create unique recipes to share that find a balance between healthy meals, comfort food, and indulgent desserts that I can share with my invisible internet friends,” she explains.
Having amassed a great following online, Merchant proceeded to write two cookbooks: Seriously Delish and The Pretty Dish, both bestsellers and include recipes that weren’t published on her blog.
“I get recipe inspiration anywhere,” remarked the full-time blogger and recipe developer in an interview with Nicole Culver. “I get it from seeing a billboard when I’m driving, from seeing a magazine cover, through looking through a magazine, from a beautiful cookbook. Having a creative mind it’s easy to pick up inspiration from anything. You kind of look around and see it.”
She also isn’t afraid of making a mess in the kitchen, as part of her experimentation with new foods. Recent recipes include one for a grilled chicken blueberry salad and another for summer salmon tacos (which we absolutely crave). “I really have not done anything that am not super passionate about or believe in,” says Merchant.
We’re just as passionate!
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]]>The post Emmy Cho Will Make You an Egg Expert appeared first on Cooking 4 All.
]]>While you might only think about fried or scrambled eggs when considering what to do with them, the truth is that there are all kinds of options! Looking for help to discover them? Here’s where Emmy Cho comes in!
Cho is a food blogger and YouTuber with a popular channel called Emmy Made in Japan. She explores a big range of recipes and food-related topics, but one of my favorite of her sets of videos is the wonderful “Egg-ceptional EGGS” series.
Here, she tries a number of different recipes that incorporate eggs as a main ingredient in order to show her viewers all of the possibilities that exist.
From making an egg fruit vegan faux egg to a DIY Mickey Mouse-shaped egg, Cho will fill your egg repertoire with all kinds of ideas that you might have never even considered before!
So, what are you waiting for? Subscribe today, and start egg binging!
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