(Easy) Crock-Pot Marinara Sauce

Let me introduce you to the marinara sauce recipe of my dreams. It’s everything that is good in this world: tomatoes, herbs, and garlic.
The flavors together are like Italy in a jar, the perfect combination of sweet and savory.
It can be a great base sauce for pizza or really anything that goes in the oven such as chicken parm or eggplant parm. But — needless to say it — it’s also great on pasta and you can even make it into a meat sauce with ground beef (not authentic Bolognese sauce but still pretty damn good.) I also use it to make poached eggs with marinara sauce for a simple brunch recipe.
Last but not least, it’s great as a dip for vegetables and mozzarella sticks. Actually mozza sticks with marinara is one of the best things in the whole world.

Curried Chickpeas

This recipe come from Joan’s on Third, a specialty food store and restaurant located in West Hollywood, Los Angeles. A great little place with a refreshing yet comfortable atmosphere and a great menu selection.
I am obsessed with the curried chickpeas at Joan's on Third. They are the best curried chickpeas ever. I’ve been there three times and every single time I’ve ordered them as part of the salad trio (a selection of three salads from their daily specials on the marketplace menu). But truth to be told I should order just the chickpeas because they're all I ever want to eat (well, that and the carrot cake.)
Luckily for me, I found the recipe on the LATimes and I was able to recreate it home — meaning that I don’t have to fly to LA if I get a curried chickpeas craving.

Mom’s Baked Turkey Meatballs

Growing up, my mom made the best meatballs in my opinion. I don’t know/remember if she took the recipe somewhere, tweaked an existing recipe or invented it from scratch (most likely is the former), and I’m not going to pretend these are super authentic Italian meatballs. But I grew up eating them and for that reason alone they hold a special place in my heart.
Mom would make these using either ground beef or ground turkey. I always preferred the turkey version — because I could actually taste the other ingredients in the meatball, not just the meat. But the beef version was also pretty spectacular.

Apple-Mint Iced Tea

It’s been scorchy hot these past few days, so I’ve been drinking a lot of refreshing drinks.
Together with my Mint and Ginger Iced Green Tea this Apple-Mint Iced Tea has been at the top of my list.
Green tea tartness goes really well with the pungent and refreshing mint aroma and is perfectly counterbalanced by the apple juice sweetness.
Super simple to make, all-natural, good-for-you, and oh-so-yummy.

Marinated Red Peppers with Garlic and Oregano

Most of the time, I don’t choose the recipes I share here, it’s the market that controls it.
As it happens when you live in a climate that deprives you of field-fresh produce for almost half the year, leaving you to go completely out of control and of course overdo it in the months that you’re graced with it — bringing home buckets of fresh produce when you only need a fraction of it.
The other day I picked-up some mega-huge red peppers thinking about pickling them, but then I changed my mind — as I often do— and I instead roasted them.

Kale Walnut Pesto

Last week I posted two recipes with kale pesto (this one and this one).
Though you guys seemed to have liked ‘em both, I had the feeling - through your comments on the blog, FB, IG and Twitter - that you were more interested in the kale pesto than the recipes themselves.
So yesterday I was like “Uhm, maybe I should post just the recipe for the kale pesto. If the readers want just to print/save the kale pesto they should. It totally makes sense!”
I know, I’m smart as a whip (Ha!)

Eggplant Parmesan Quinoa Casserole

Who doesn’t love eggplant Parmesan? Raise your hands.
Ok, let me check...apparently everybody does, not surprisingly.
Even kids who don’t eat veggies can’t resist their Parm, and never make a peep about the eggplant in the first place - pretty awesome.
Eggplant Parm is pure comfort food, or (let me rephrase that) it’s comfort food at its best.
And as you might have noticed, fall is fast approaching (yesterday morning was like in the 50s ‘round here, brr...) Which means we need warmth and comfort food, like a piping hot bowl of oatmeal for breakfast or something with pumpkin OR eggplant Parm.

Orange Glazed Salmon

Confession time on TheIronYou. Brace yourself because this is going to be a hard one to believe.
I DON’T LIKE FISH. Boom! There, I said it.
To be more accurate, I’ve never liked fish (except canned tuna, which really doesn’t taste like fish).
When I was a kid I remember eating just bread at Champlin’s Seafood in Narragansett (RI) while everyone else was enjoying their fish/lobster dinner.
Those were long summers let me tell you. Every time we would go out for dinner, I dreaded ending up in one of those classic New England seafood eatery where they serve only seafood.
I remember staring at the menu trying to find something to eat, but resigned myself to order either bread or coleslaw. Not even French fries. Because fries, in seafood eateries, taste like seafood.
Period.