Allergies

It's pure magic.

Virtually every vegetable can be cooked in this way — no recipe required.

You can adapt this simple formula for any fresh vegetables; try a mixture of vinegars and spices for a truly custom pickle pleasure.

Just add a loaf of bread, a salad, and a bottle of wine!

Even though the gluten-free market has come a long way, there’s still a lot to learn, if you’re trying to make the switch.

They're gluten-free and vegan, too.

Researchers have developed a drug that may have “potentially life-saving properties” for children who suffer from peanut allergies. The drug won’t cure peanut allergies in children, but rather decrease the chances that accidentally ingesting peanuts will lead to a life-threatening allergic reaction, according to a report from The New York Times.

I have a confession to make: My entire family is obsessed with a snack food that I initially purchased for my toddler. Like many new moms, I stressed over the importance of introducing peanut butter into my child’s diet. Too soon? Too late? A spoonful? A smudge?

Snacks you can pack for afternoon snack time without worry.

After speaking with parents of kids with severe allergies, I realize there are steps I can take to be a better ally and friend.

If you have a food allergy, Halloween is a great holiday to make you feel left out. For example: The house on the corner is giving out king-sized Snickers bars? Cool — but I’m super allergic to peanuts! Fortunately we have the Teal Pumpkin Project, which encourages people to provide trick-or-treaters non-edible goodies in dedicated teal pumpkins. Want to be a neighborhood hero this Halloween?

Diagnosing food allergies is a complicated matter. On top of pinpointing the source of an allergy, there’s the added murkiness of the fact that people can outgrow them. So how do you figure out if you’re still allergic to something without jeopardizing your health? A new study published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology spotlights something called food challenge, which serves as a pretty good test, reports NPR’s The Salt.

Food allergies can be tough to live with: People who suffer from them have to monitor their dietary intake and be ready to take action when something slips through. But a new study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, by investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), has found that food allergies aren’t as common as you might think.

When my son first started eating solid foods, I like to think I was pretty relaxed. I puréed meatloaf or whatever else I made for dinner, gave him the same full-fat yogurt I already kept in the house, and let him have his way with leftover coconut rice. I was, however, petrified about peanut butter. I waited until his 9-month doctor appointment, and fed him a tiny spoonful under the watchful eye of my pediatrician, lest he have a negative reaction.

Have you noticed a proliferation of teal-hued pumpkins adorning the steps and porches in your neighborhood? No, you haven’t stumbled into a particularly ardent enclave of Martha Stewart acolytes. These bright turquoise jack-o’-lanterns, whether a simple paper cutout or an actual pumpkin that’s been given a fresh coat of paint, indicate a home that is participating in the Teal Pumpkin Project.

Kombu broth, or dashi, is as quintessential to Japanese cooking as chicken broth is to American cooks.

I used to be an insufferably picky eater. I hated all meat, most vegetables, spicy food, nuts — the list went on and on. I was afraid to try any new foods because, what if I didn’t like them? That apprehension made me reflexively dislike anything unfamiliar I put in my mouth, leaving me even more fearful of trying it again, a self-reinforcing cycle that left me living on a diet of cereal, fruit, and rice and beans.

If you love the way ripe summer tomatoes and peaches play together, you will simply love this blend of tomato and mango.

Yes, the spiralizer is a bit of a novelty, but it helps make things a bit more playful. I’ve found that my ambivalence towards cucumbers is immediately assuaged when I turn them into noodles, and I’ve yet to meet a spiralized zucchini dish I haven’t liked. This dish capitalizes on the novelty of the spiralizer to create a vibrant and colorful veggie noodle dish that might just change the way you feel about salad.

There are few instances when burning food improves its flavor, but roasting peppers is one.

Slow-cooker fruit butter is a simple solution for preserving large quantities of fruit without any canning equipment or heating up the stove.

If you’ve ever been overambitious and purchased too many juicy summer peaches at the farm stand or farmers market, preserving them in the slow cooker is just the answer. Making peach butter requires no peeling, no pots to stir on the stove, and none of the canning equipment you need when making peach jam. Slow-cooker peach butter is the easiest, hands-off way to make sure your peach haul is turned into something tasty. Fruit butters get their name from their thick but spreadable texture.

It’s hard not to be intrigued by a dish with a title like this. Leave it to the Italians to name a recipe that lends a few laughs. What the heck makes the water so crazy? Actually, not much at all, which is why you should ditch your original plans for dinner and make this simple, comforting recipe instead. Crazy water, or acqua pazza as it translates to in Italian, is nothing but an easy tomato-based broth, enhanced with a few aromatics and herbs.

Forget canning and instead look to the freezer.

If you're looking for a quick way to preserve a bunch of cherry tomatoes, pickling is a unique way to put them to good use.

Pretty pink ginger (and the color is all-natural)!

Tomato purée is a cooking essential you might be missing. Simpler and a bit thicker than its flavorful cousin, tomato sauce, tomato purée is a fast way to quickly prepare and freeze a bushel of fresh tomatoes for future cooking. Tomato purée can be turned into tomato sauce or tomato soup. It can be used to cook rice for a colorful side dish, or cooked with rice and seafood for a showstopping paella. Oh, and it’s a great base for homemade barbecue sauce.

If you don’t know about succotash, you should. Like potato salad or coleslaw, it’s a frequent player at summer cookouts. While a classic succotash is all about corn, lima beans, and maybe some tomatoes or red bell peppers, this one, from Jeanine Donofrio of Love & Lemons, eschews the norm. Swap out the limas for chickpeas, add in a mix of tender summer squash, and boost the flavor with smoked paprika.

My grandmother kept a tidy little vegetable garden outside her New England home. While she did a decent job of growing squash, cucumbers, and some tomatoes, her best results always came out of her snap bean plants. This also meant my annual August trips to visit her were filled by snapping beans on her porch (a job reserved strictly for grandchildren) and putting jars upon jars of canned green beans in her cellar.

Sun tea conjures up the charming memories of my grandmother’s tea pitcher on my grandparent’s screened-in porch. As kids we drank it over ice on the front steps, swatting away mosquitoes. My mother used to brew an unsweetened version of it on our tiny apartment balconies when I was a teenager. And then iced tea seemed to disappear from my life entirely until I moved to the South and learned how a proper Southerner makes boiled iced tea for surviving sweltering Southern summers.

Baking a whole eggplant is something of a culinary metamorphosis. The hot oven transforms eggplant’s firm, spongy interior into a luxurious, velvety texture, which in turn lends its merits to savory dips and vegan bolognese. Yet cooks cannot agree on just how eggplant should be baked. Should we halve it and score it, or poke it and wrap it in foil as you would a Russet potato? Our testing resulted in a dead-simple solution with stellar results.

The magic of one-ingredient banana ice cream is truly undeniable. Freeze some bananas, give them a turn in the food processor, and presto — easy, dreamy, dairy-free ice cream that you can feel good about eating. Banana ice cream is a simple, modern classic that shuns fuss and finesse at its core, but why let that stop you from making it a bit more exciting? With just a little extra effort (only two more ingredients!), you can make this frozen dessert into something super special.

This slow-cooker sauce is the ultimate answer to the overabundance of summer fruit. Whether you went crazy at the U-Pick or just got too excited at the farmers market or grocery store, turning your excess into a warm, sweet sauce is an easy solution — especially when all that’s required of you is dumping the fruit into the slow cooker with a little water and sugar and letting the appliance do its thing. Cooking fruit low and slow in the slow cooker is a little like magic.

I suppose one could make the case that dressing a fruit salad is a bit like gilding the lily, especially when the fruit is at the height of season. To that argument I say, a little extra bling never hurt anybody! In this fruit salad from Yossy Arefi, the bling comes in the form of sweet-tart lemon-vanilla bean syrup. Beyond the syrup (which you can use to jazz up sparkling water or a cocktail), this fruit salad is all about using what you like, what looks good, and what smells good.

Q: At the age of 60, I became allergic to shellfish and legumes including peanuts and soy. I love to cook Asian food, but most recipes call for soy sauce, which I cannot eat. Do you have a good substitute for soy sauce that I can use in my cooking? Sent by Pam Editor: Coconut aminos and tamari are great alternatives for soy sauce, but still deliver that savory flavor your looking for.

I grew up with a mother that was very ahead of her time. In the early ’80s she had turned half of our back yard into an organic vegetable garden that almost completely sustained us during the warm months of the year. With four children running around, she had lot of help harvesting. I think that my love of gardening (and vegetables) stemmed from that childhood garden. In particular I remember the snap peas, strawberries, and zucchini.

If you have kids, you’re likely familiar with dealing with allergy-free snacks. Peanuts and peanut butter are often banned from many classrooms and schools, along with a host of other foods you might have grown up loving. What if eggs, dairy, and gluten were also off the table? Turns out there are plenty of options that deliver snacks you want to eat in a way that works for most people at the table.

While the idea of churning my own butter appeals to the part of me that obsessed over the Little House on the Prairie books as kid, I think that if Laura Ingalls Wilder landed in the present day, she’d ditch that butter churn for a blender in a heartbeat. In a blender, making your own butter becomes a practical, everyday affair for us modern-day home cooks. Find a sale on your favorite heavy cream? Have half a carton left over from the weekend? Treat yourself to some homemade butter.

If you are the one who always winds up finishing the last of the salsa when you’re out with friends, then this recipe is for you. It’s not fancy or by any means gourmet, but it goes great with salty chips and cold beer. It’s time to pay your share of the salsa bill — treat your pals to some restaurant-style salsa tonight. Ripe summer tomatoes make a fresh pico de gallo that is out of this world, but for the rest of the year, you want canned tomatoes.

Microwave popcorn has changed my snacking habits forever. No, I’m not talking about the plastic-wrapped packages of microwave popcorn from the store — although I will thank them for the inspiration. I’m talking about a more DIY version using a scoop of kernels and a plain brown paper lunch bag. It’s so easy and fast that it has now become the only way I make popcorn. Any paper bag will do, but I like to use brown paper lunch bags.

The time has come for you to embrace homemade salad dressing — starting with this vinaigrette. You don’t need a recipe, and you don’t even really need measuring spoons — all you need is a basic understanding of how oil and vinegar work together. Here is everything you need to know. The most basic ratio for making a salad vinaigrette is the following. one part vinegar (or other acid) three parts oil Using this basic formula there are almost endless variations.

Have you ever had congee? This silky, savory rice porridge is an everyday breakfast in China — and indeed, in many parts of the world, where it goes by names like jook, khao tom moo, and arroz caldo. Obviously, if you’re not already in the know when it comes to this breakfast, you’d better listen up. You’re in for a real treat.

This is take-out menu beef and broccoli stir-fry — but so much better. No sad broccoli. No chewy, dry pieces of beef. No gloppy sauce. Replace all those with crisp-tender broccoli and savory bites of beef tossed with a simple three-ingredient stir-fry sauce. Chinese “take-out” night will never be the same. For this quick stir-fried dish, flank steak or skirt steak are your best choices.

Give a warm welcome to your new favorite weeknight side dish. Stir-frying a big bag of spinach has become one of my favorite ways to get greens on the plate these last few weeks, and a few slices of garlic in the mix makes the spinach feel all grown up. Even in the world of fast stir-fries, spinach is a speedy dish. Grace Young, author of Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge and my personal stir-fry guru, reassured me that from start to finish, stir-frying spinach should take two minutes, tops.

In the grand pantheon of roasted vegetables, I feel that broccoli is king. Reviled by picky toddlers and neglected by snacking party-goers, here is a vegetable that is absolutely redeemed by the power of a hot oven. The tough stems turn tender, the tree-like tops turn crispy, and the color goes from dull and boring to a brilliant, appetizing emerald green. All hail King Broccoli.

A simple puréed soup is something I turn to often. Lately, I’ve been relying on a lightly spiced cauliflower soup to tide be over between the richness of the holidays. The nice thing about this recipe is that it takes very little time to pull together. You simply cook down the onions and garlic with cauliflower, broth, and warm spices and ready your favorite toppings (I like crispy parsley, toasty cashews, and spicy red pepper flakes — all with a dash of olive oil).

Fads are fun to reminisce about, right? I look back fondly on things like slap bracelets, hammer pants, and wildly permed mullets. I spent a lot of time in the late ’80s making fun of my mom’s need to wear shoulder pads in everything. But fads shift and change along with the cultural conversation, and presently, the way I eat is largely perceived as a fad diet.

The cookie you can totally eat three or four of!

On the most celebrated food holiday of the year, having food restrictions can seem like a burden for guests and hosts alike — but only if you let it. For some, dietary issues mean more than a diet; a shift in lifestyle expands beyond fasts, 30-day resets, or the detox of the day. Allergies can have life-altering effects and a speck of certain foods could mean real danger for a child or an adult.

Here’s one more way to get your pork chop fix — in the slow cooker! I particularly love this method when there are a few extra people around my table or when I just want to come home to a meal that’s already done. Since you cook the chops on top of a bed of vegetables, this one also comes with its own side dish. Pork chops are so quick and easy to make in the oven, so why bother making them in the slow cooker? I’ll give you the reason I gave myself: sanity.

As someone with severe nut allergies and a child in a nut-free preschool, I am over-the-moon happy about all the peanut butter alternatives available these days, from store-bought tahini and sunflower butter to homemade pumpkin seed spread (and pumpkin seed butter cups). But even with these satisfactory PB-replacements, I think we can still look at other options, beyond tree nuts and seeds. Because, with an open mind, one ingredient limitation often leads to another ingredient revelation.

Good news for anyone with a gluten sensitivity — you will soon be able to test any food to see if it contains gluten right at the dinner table. 6SensorLabs, a start-up in San Francisco, has developed the Nima device, which can test a food for gluten in as little as two minutes. No more guessing based on ingredient labels or trusting the word or your server when you’re out to eat. The Nima sensor works similarly to a blood glucose monitor.

It has all the hallmarks of your favorite takeout pad Thai — except those spaghetti squash noodles are the star of the show.

Your favorite pasta impersonator, speedy-style.

Toast is certainly having a moment. Avocado toast is popping up on numerous cafe menus around our city, and I’ve been to a number of spots that serve toast with nut butters “made in-house.” And while I love a crusty slice of toasted bread slathered thick with almond butter, I often scoff at the price tag. So lately I’ve been making my own version at home.

The best part about this vegetarian bowl recipe is how easy it is to make. This makes it an ideal candidate for one of those hectic mid-week dinners when all you want is a delicious meal on the table without having to think too hard. It’s made with hearty red lentils, fresh ginger, plenty of spices, a couple handfuls of baby spinach, and coconut milk — a perfect balance of heat and creaminess.

This quiche is all about the transformation of humble ingredients into a beautiful meal. Quiche is at once fancy, yet deeply practical, using whatever vegetables you happen to have around. You can use zucchini, summer squash, tomatoes, tougher greens (like Swiss chard), or corn. If you decide to use eggplant, just precook it a little before adding it in. Cube the eggplant and then roast or sauté it in a pan with olive oil and salt until soft and golden.

I think I can skip the sales pitch here and get right down to brass tacks, yes? I love noodle cups. You love noodle cups (you know you do). But none of us really loves the weird artificial ingredients or the flavorless nubs of dehydrated vegetables that come along for the ride. Let’s fix this situation. Rather than give up our torrid noodle-cup affair (as if!), the obvious solution is to make our own DIY cups — and you’ll be surprised at how easy that really is.

Zucchini seems to get a bit of a bad rap, which I think is a little unfortunate. People write it off as flavorless and boring, but I happen to quite like it. Zucchini is sort of like the boneless, skinless chicken breast of the vegetable world — there’s not a whole lot to it, but it’s a great vehicle for flavor. In this dish I combine it with sweet red onion, woodsy thyme, and finish it off with the salty punch of feta cheese.

“Zoodles” may be a silly name for this dish, but I don’t think zucchini noodles are going anywhere anytime soon. And that’s definitely a good thing, because it’s that time of year when gardens everywhere are overflowing with the green stuff. Zucchini noodles pair perfectly with all of summer’s bounty, especially this zesty pistachio-parsley pesto — you’ll want to put it on anything and everything!