Lifestyle Today

For over half a century, pizza has had a welcome home in the grocery store frozen foods aisle. Totino’s and Tombstone began selling frozen pizzas in the 1960s, soon after easy-to-heat TV dinners debuted in living rooms across America. Red Baron got into the game with their own frozen pies in the 1970s, which quickly dominated school lunch menus nationwide. But perhaps the biggest development in at-home pizza came in 1995, when Kraft launched DiGiorno. The aggressively advertised “better than delivery” pies feature a signature “rising crust” that puffs up as it bakes, for a doughy result more reminiscent of freshly made pizza. Within a few years, DiGiorno rose to become the number-one-selling frozen pizza brand in the United States, and it has rema...

Initially, Kevin Bludso wasn’t interested in writing a cookbook. “I didn’t think my life was worthy enough of a story,” he recalls. Still, with his debut book, Bludso’s BBQ Cookbook: A Family Affair in Smoke and Soul, Bludso took the opportunity to dive deep into East Texas–style barbecue and his family history. Los Angeles–based Bludso is a fourth-generation pitmaster and a judge on The American Barbecue Showdown (which airs on Netflix). He opened his first barbecue restaurant, Bludso’s BBQ, in his hometown of Compton in 2007, bringing recipes he learned from his grandmother during summers spent in Corsicana, Texas.  The cookbook is just as much about barbecue as it is about Bludso’s life and upbringing. This is not necessarily uncommon in a ...

This homemade garlic bread recipe with freshly toasted crusty bread slathered in herbed garlic butter will compliment any pasta meal. Today we’re making some warm homemade garlic bread with freshly toasted slices smothered generously in a drippy, buttery herbed garlic butter. This 5-ingredient recipe uses any Italian or French bread, lots of minced garlic, grated Parmigiano Reggiano or Parmesan cheese and freshly chopped Italian parsley. For best garlic bread results, the key is to keep the recipe simple and the ratio of butter to garlic just right. We’re using 4-6 cloves of garlic per loaf to load up on that garlicky goodness to pair with your favorite pasta meal. It’s perfect for sopping up any spaghetti or pasta sauce or just for dipping in some marinara. Like these Parmesa...

How To Prep Garlic For Cooking While in Italy, I was taught how to properly prep garlic for cooking. Let me start from the beginning. I recently was in Italy, Tuscany to be more precise, with my family and some friends to celebrate my daughter's 2020 graduation from college. Yes, the Covid thing got in our way in 2020, 2021 and almost in 2022 but we were able to go and had an incredible time. The Italians know how to enjoy their food and wine. I didn't want to come home. At the villa we were staying at, about 1 ½ hours car ride from Rome, our housekeeper/cook prepared three dinners for us, one of them being a cooking class. It was amazing to watch her make her native meals including homemade spinach ricotta raviolis from scratch. I'll be posting about this night in the futur...

On August 6, 2021, Zachariah Porter filmed himself frying an onion. To be more precise, he made a two-minute TikTok video in which he finds a Great American Steakhouse Onion Machine at the Savers in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and proceeds to use a plastic contraption that looks a lot like an apple slicer to make his very own, very deep-fried, whole blossoming onion—inspired by the iconic Bloomin’ Onion appetizer at Outback Steakhouse (and countless other fast food chains and county fairs). In the video, Porter cores a peeled onion, places it into the slicer, and prays for the best as he pushes down on the handles. After a successful cut, he coats the onion in batter—dry, wet, dry—then the camera cuts to the onion, bubbling away in a pot of hot ...

These 5-ingredient slow cooker Italian beef sandwiches have mouthwatering chuck roast on a toasted hoagie roll with melted provolone cheese. Today we’re making some slow cooker Italian beef sandwiches. These hot sandwiches deliver big on flavor with fork-tender chuck roast slow cooked with pepperoncini peppers and Italian seasoning. Serve them dry, wet, or dipped in au jus on crusty rolls with lots of melty cheese and some giardiniera, if that’s your thing. I like to joke that these crockpot Italian beef sandwiches are like Mississippi pot roast and French Dip sandwich had a baby with its tangy broth and lots of sloppy sandwich action from all the au jus dipping. Make them for parties, game day, or just as fun, family meal. It’s an easy 5-minute prep recipe with only 5 ingre...

Everywhere there’s corn, there are tamales. From the Pacific Northwest to Patagonia, families make masa, wrap dollops of dough with savory fillings in corn husks, then steam them by the dozens. As small packages reminiscent of the comforts of home or of traveling street food, tamales are original Indigenous sustenance.  We often think of tamales as practical and economical doughy vessels holding various meats. But today, cooks, farmers, and producers are innovators and artisans that use a variety of ingredients, grow corn in new regions, and nixtamalize maize for fresh masa to reshape what tamales can be—from savory to sweet, meat-centric to plant-based, traditional to modern—while still connecting the dish to its past. Throughout Latin Americ...

Melina Hammer greeted me at the entrance of Catbird Cottage with a smile and a small jar of salmon rillettes that we would soon spread over salty and crackly seeded rye lavash. It was a chilly spring afternoon in the backyard of her Instagram-famous Upstate New York bed and breakfast, which is the inspiration for her debut cookbook, A Year at Catbird Cottage. Hammer is an experienced photographer and food stylist who has worked extensively with the New York Times and, most recently, on fellow upstater Julia Turshen’s Simply Julia. She has a clear vision with her recipe work: delicious and accessible cooking that leans into the four distinct East Coast seasons. And while this concept isn’t bleeding-edge new, Hammer’s recipes demonstrate that there’...