By The Movies: How to Throw an Oscar-Themed Party

One Recipe for Every Picture Nominated For Best Picture (Mostly)

I love the Oscar's. I've been watching them every year since I can remember. I love the fashion (Bjork's Swan Dress? Celine Dion's backward suit? Catherine Zeta Jones in anything?) I love when someone unexpected wins (remember young Gwyneth Paltrow winning for Shakespeare In Love?) And I love dreaming about what the life of a glamorous movie star is like.

Most years I watch the award's ceremony alone in my pajamas. If I can't be home, I tape them. But this year, I am having a party! We're going to dress up, eat fancy food, and drink fancy drinks. In honor of the movies nominated, I am going to try to have ten foods or drinks based off of the ten movi

es that are nominated for best picture. (Maybe I need a better hobby.....)

Let's Have Beans at Every Meal! Or, How To Please Your Football Loving Meataholic Friends

Recipe: Go Pack! the Vegetables in the Chili

(editor's note: I was supposed to get this post out before the Super Bowl, but due to various technical issues around the house, and working 8 days in a row prior to the Super Bowl I did not. Now our technical issues have been fixed and I figured I'd still post this. Its still a good recipe and you all can get excited for next year's football season.)

If you haven't already guessed from the picture above, I am a Packers fan. I was raised in Wisconsin and most of my Sundays throughout the fall and the winter were spent settled in front of a TV with my mom or my

grandparents watching the Packers. Granted, as a child I hated football and it wasn't until I went to college that I fully realized what all the fuss was about. Especially now, because I don't live there any more, I find myself defending the great state of Wisconsin and the Great Team of Our Time and explaining the general benefits of being a cheesehead. I, in short, have become extremely (disgustingly?) proud of my state and will indulge in a great debate about it with anyone who asks.

If you are holding sports parties in the next few months, but want to stay true to your vegetarian ways, you might want to consider putting together a vegetarian chili. (Like I said before, this was going to be a Super Bowl post, but seeing as it is no longer "current" the generic "sports parties" will have to suffice.) This is also a good dish to throw in the crock pot before you head off to work. It is delicious, easy, and satiating.

What to do with all the stuff in the Fridge

Recipe: Vegetable Fritters with Scallion Sour Cream and Sautéed Purple Kale

It's an old tale. You go to the store with the intention of buying a few fresh vegetables. The recipe you're following calls for half of whatever you bought. You swear to yourself that you'll use the rest of the veggies in a fritatta or something, but you end up going out to eat and ordering takeout and eating leftovers and then two weeks later you find a moldy tomato (cabbage, kale, carrots...) sitting at the bottom of your fridge. From then on you swear to eat frozen dinners and dried pasta, because that sort of stuff won't stink up your house. Six months later you've gained five pounds of frozen pizza weight and find the produce aisle at the grocery store and the whole cycle starts again.

The cycle can stop, my friends! The trick is to either throw all the veggies into whatever recipe you were making in the first place and screw the amount the recipe calls for, because the more vegetables the better, OR! finally make that fritatta (or salad, or whatever) that you've sworn to make but never did because you've gotten sidetracked during the week. If you're having trouble figuring out what to do with all the random assortment of vegetables just sitting there in you're fridge, try out this veggie fritter dish. Don't focus on what vegetables are in the recipe, you can substitute with what you've got on hand. Follow the recipe in the pancake batter and throw in what you have. The veggies I've included in this recipe are just what I happened to have that day. Pair the dish with some sauteed kale and a simple salad for a full meal.

"Eat a Vegetable, You Disgusting Pig"

One more post today...

Everyone, watch this video. It is pretty funny and rings true.

Bread is my Obsession. Corn Bread is my Life.

Recipe: Cheddar Cheese Corn Bread

Reasons I cannot go vegan:

1. Dairy: ice cream, cheese.

2. Eggs : poached over asparagus

3. Cheesy Corn Bread: contains eggs and cheese

Yes, I realize it's weird that Cheesy Corn Bread has its own category, and bacon has none, but over the last year or so corn bread has become a little obsession of mine. It all started last year when I was working at a small restaurant and I needed to develop a corn bread recipe. I made and tasted cheddar corn bread so many times that blood stream was starting to clog with corn meal and my pores were seeping cheddar cheese. None of my recipes were right for the purpose, however, and another girl's recipe, a girl with a baking a pastry degree, was chosen. Maybe for this reason exactly, I started to search for the perfect corn bread recipe. To show that baking and pastry girl who is boss.

Pizza Bread with the Italians

Recipe: Nonna's Pizza Bread

This past week, I went to Florida. First, I went to DISNEY WORLD (and ate a lot of fried food), but the real gem of the trip was a four day trip to my boyfriend's grandparent's retirement community, Dolphin Cay. First of all, they have a HOT TUB (what up jacuzzi.) But more importantly, they have a wonderful fresh garden from which they eat from every day. They have two different kinds of spinach, spring mix, celery, beets, orange, grapefruit, and lemon trees. Every morning we'd eat sweet fruit grown just outside and every night we'd have a salad of the most tender greens, pasta and bread made with really fresh spinach, or roasted red beets grown in Nona and Papa's Florida soil.

Papa did all the gardening in Dolphin Cay and Nonna was the one who cooked it (well Papa did make some great homemade wine and sausages, but Nonna did all the day to day cooking.) From the day we arrived to the day we left, Nonna stuffed us with food. No matter how much we ate, it was never enough for her. She probably would not have be satisfied, even if we were constantly eating from sun up to sun down. The food was delicious and I didn't mind being forced to eat. Everything was homemade and homegrown and I left feeling inspired to stop eating so much junk food and cook everything from scratch. (Of course when I got off the plane, the first thing I bought was a bag of tortilla chips and guacamole. But hey, I'm only human.)

One of the things that we ate every night with dinner was Nonna's Pizza Bread. Its a basic white fluffy bread with the texture of a thick and soft pizza crust. Its great for soaking up left over pasta sauce or salad dressing or with a little hunk of cheese (or homemade sausage....) My boyfriend's family has been eating this bread for years, and now I'm happy to share it with you.

The Difficulties of Risotto

Recipe: Winter Risotto with Butternut Squash and Broccolini

Risotto is one of those dishes that I never seem to get right. There are a few dishes in my repertoire, such as getting homemade bread to rise properly or really anything to do with baking, that no matter how many times I make it something always goes wrong. The procedure behind risotto is a fairly simple concept. Saute some garnish and arborio rice, reduce some wine, and add hot stock bit by bit until the rice is cooked. But you can add too much stock or not enough, cook the rice too fast or too slow, stir the pot too much or too little, and before you know it you wind up with a glutenous (or rock hard) mess without any idea of what you did (or didn't do) wrong (or right).

But Oh! When you get it right, risotto is an amazing dish. Comforting on cold winter days with a bit of braised parsnips and kale, relaxing on a spring afternoon and paired with asparagus and artichokes, refreshing in summer with roasted corn and tomatoes, and hearty for fall when eaten with a bite of squash. Creamy and chewy, aromatic and warm, risotto is that wonderful buttery comfort food that is perfect in every season.

My mother and I had consumed risotto many times at reputable restaurants across the country before we thought to make it at home. This was way before my professional cooking days, but after my "rainbow sprinkles on EVERYTHING" era. My mom and I were adventurous eaters, but needed some practice in the kitchen. Needless to say, our homemade risotto was TERRIBLE. We added way more stock than the recipe called for, but the rice was still terribly undercooked. I think we were so frustrated by the whole experience that we threw the rice in the garbage and ordered pizza.

Risotto is a laborious dish, and can be frustrating to the inexperienced. But don't give up! All it needs is a little gentle love, or as Otis Redding would say: "Try a little tenderness." I got it wrong many times before I got it right.