I don’t admit this to just anybody, but my favorite junk food is Mary Kitchen corned beef hash.

Yes, I know it is disgusting. Yes, I know it has 50% of your daily value of saturated fat in it per serving. Yes, I know it looks like dog food. But I still love it, even if I feel pretty nasty after eating it.

That is why I was so excited this week when I discovered a recipe that is even better-tasting than Mary Kitchen hash—not to mention worlds healthier. As if that wasn’t awesome enough, it has four ingredients only, making it the easiest thing ever to prepare. All you need is:

• cabbage

• potato

• ground beef

• onion

Salt and pepper work well for flavoring it, and I like to serve mine with ketchup. But those aren’t technically ingredients. Anyway, here is the recipe. Cook it for a good long time—probably 5-10 minutes longer than the recipe recommends, because you want all the ingredients to be nice and browned at the end.

You can thank me later.

[Image courtesy of ApartmentTherapy.com.]

Got a lot of time on your hands this summer? Like spicy smelly food that’s been fermenting for a while but tastes great? Make kimchi!

Kimchi is a dish that is to Korea as french fries are to the United States. (Editor’s Note: Great when you’re drunk/depressed?) In other words, it is much craved and eaten with everything.

So what is it? Well, generally speaking, it’s spiced up, fermented cabbage. Like super fermented. Like days – and sometimes years-long – fermented.

No, but seriously, it is. But, I mean, it’s delicious. A bajillion Koreans (and Americans and Europeans and all the other world-wide kimchi converts) can’t be wrong.

So satisfy your ferment tooth (mmm…fermented…) with this tasty recipe and broaden those horizons. Read More »

The New York Times recently came out with a list of the top 11 easily accessible foods of which people should really be eating more. While I can’t say there are any real shockers on the list, I am pretty happy with my diet where it stands.

It’s definitely nice to know that the Times was thinking about regular people and regular grocery stores when they made this list (for example, you won’t find any pleas to track down and eat foods like arrowroot or Cornish game hens), but honestly, who is going to read this list and think, “Swiss chard and fresh beets! Now that I know this, I’d better get a move on to the grocery store!”?

Without further ado, I present to you the list and my own personal commentary on each food:

1. Beets. I’m not going to lie; I actually kind of like beets, but I haven’t eaten them for years, not since they were prepared for me from a can in my school’s cafeteria. Actually, that’s not true—I did buy some actual fresh beets a few weeks ago and try to cook them in the oven, but it was a disaster. They ended up not softening enough and dyeing those hard-to-reach spots between my fingernails fuchsia for two days. Read More »