In This Small Kitchen

Once, when I was living in France, a friend’s French boyfriend looked at me and said, “you’re a hippie, right?”

It was so weird, because while there have been Birkenstock phases in my life, my, er, French period was more a time of fitted black outfits and mascara than brown rice and lentils. (As it went, the French guy turned out to have used my curly blond hair as a window to my soul.)

Of course, as health and wellness have become de rigueur, granola crunchy has morphed into granola chic. Case in point, the extreme non-crunchiness of this delicious recipe which features kale, hemp seeds, and flax oil.

That means my jars filled with beans are hip, not hippie, as is a practice I’ve taken on: soaking my beans and grains before I eat them.

I mentioned soaking lentils as a timesaver in this Curried Lentil Soup recipe. And soaking does reduce cooking time-brown rice takes a mere half hour, and bean cooking gets whittled from several hours to just one (or even less). Pouring water over your beans or grains before you leave for work hardly counts as prepwork, but it’s a simple move to make dinner that night happen more quickly. As I learned from Michael Pollan and Isa Chandra Moskowitz, soaking also has nutritional benefits, as soaked grains can more easily convey minerals and vitamins to you. If you don’t get a chance to cook your soaked food when you intended, no worries! Just cook it the next day-for an even shorter period.

Here are a few ideas to get started soaking:

• Your Morning Oatmeal. I always soak my oatmeal overnight. I find a noticeable difference in how long the bowl of oats keeps me full when it’s been soaked (til a late lunch!) versus not soaked (til 10am!). I stir in a couple teaspoons of yogurt, too, which helps break down the grains, making them even more digestible. I heat my oatmeal in the microwave, but you don’t have to.
• Your Mixed Grains Bowls. Combine your favorite combination of grains and beans and pour water over in the morning. When you go to cook, you can use about 25% less water than you’d ordinarily use, and cut cooking time by about the same amount. I recently soaked 1 cup of brown rice, 2 tablespoons of pearl barley, and 1/4 cup brown lentils all day, then boiled them with 2 cups of water for 30 minutes. The amount of water and cooking time will depend on how long you soaked, so you’ll have to experiment with doneness-or try cooking them like pasta, which will give you more control.
• Your Chicken Chili. This recipe for Healthy Chicken Chili is an all-time favorite. When I made it recently, I soaked the barley and about 3/4 cups of Rancho Gordo pintos overnight before adding them both where the recipe says to add the barley. I used only 4 cups of water instead of 5. Dinner simmered for just 30 minutes-and was incredibly delicious.

Have you ever soaked beans or grains? Are you interested in hearing more about it?

I’m so excited to be working with Skinnygirl Daily this month, to tell you about-and participate in-the Skinnygirl Healthy Habits Challenge (which you can enter here!). The challenge is about making better decisions for the mind, body, or soul, and you can chime in or follow along using the hashtag #SkinnygirlHH.

Anyway, though we don’t talk a ton about health here (I think it’s implied when you discuss home cooking), as winter winds down, and we finally approach spring, I bet I’m not the only one who feels a little, well, soft. I can’t wait to get back on my bike, to run around in the park, and to eat summer vegetables adorned with nothing but grill marks.

But one step at a time. While we wait for the days to turn warm and long, I wanted to tell you about a healthy habit I’ve adopted for the challenge that you could pick up right this second. Here it is: eat chocolate for dessert.

I’ve always loved sugar. I’ve loved it since I led my sister and neighbor on campaigns to steal marshmallows when our parents weren’t looking. But here’s the thing about sugar: it is often delivered with a lot of other food, enough sustenance to count as lunch-except that slice of cake never feels like lunch. When the fact sank in that sweets really were a treat, I delighted in applying the stomach space saved on sweets to foods that nourished me better.

That said, what’s a girl to eat for dessert? Here’s my answer: dark chocolate. It’s delicious, it’s easy, and it’s gloriously itself, meaning you don’t need tons of carbs or copious amounts of butter to make it delicious. I opt to keep an open bag of chocolate chips in the fridge, but you could indulge in a fancy chocolate bar, if that’s more your style.

What are your healthy habits? If you don’t have any, you’ll find great ones in the daily Healthy Habits Challenge emails - join here!

This post was sponsored by Skinnygirl. You can join the Healthy Habits Challenge (and enter to win a trip to NYC) here, and you should also check out Skinnygirl’s Tasty Nutrition Bar (pictured above)-they’re tasty yet healthy and include my dessert favorite, dark chocolate. They’re less than 170 calories and come in Chocolate Pretzel, Banana Oatmeal and Peanut Butter with Sea Salt flavors. Thanks for supporting the sponsors that keep Big Girls, Small Kitchen delicious!

This winter, Alex and I have been getting out of the house-out of town, even-on fun dates we booked using our HowAboutWe for Couples membership. You might have heard about the site more as a place for dating, but there’s also a whole section for people in relationships to book interesting, out-of-the-ordinary evenings and day dates in cities across the U.S., without having to hash out the exact details ourselves. I’ve been pretty thrilled to put the planning in HowAboutWe’s capable hands, and we’ve had the best time fending off the seasonal doldrums on our dates.

So far, we’ve headed up the Hudson for a whiskey tour, drunk cider and eaten serrano ham at Tertulia, taken a bike repair course, and attended an all-vegetarian supper club.

Which brings us to a snowy Saturday in Brooklyn, when we walked up Vanderbilt Avenue to Ample Hills, maker of delicious ice cream in flavors like cookie au lait, peppermint pattie (my favorite), and salted crack caramel (the rest of the world’s favorite). The weather was cold (which meant no lines at the ice cream parlor, epically crowded in summer), but winter has never stopped me from eating ice cream before.

Hearts materialized above our head while we were debating flavors! Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, after all.

Our date included a full-on brownie sundae, plus two warm drinks. All this was free with our HowAboutWe membership, which was really cool, and it also made deciding to go out to ice cream and spend some quality time together a really easy decision. Happily, all memberships come with one free date a month-everything from a decorate-your-own donut date in L.A., to a 73-story ride to the top of Seattle’s Sky Observatory, to a piñata-making date in Chicago!

For our sundae, we chose a brownie base.
My scoop was pistachio squared (pistachio AND pistachio brittle), while Alex went for the coconut fudge sorbet (so rich!). We asked for hot fudge, because who on earth chooses caramel sauce when there is hot fudge on offer?? The Ample Hills scooper piled all the whipped cream on my scoop, since Alex doesn’t eat dairy.

We had fancy maraschino cherries planted on top of each of our scoops. And then rainbow sprinkles, too. Of course.

For the hot drink, we went for espresso, a much needed antidote to the rich, icy bowl of goodness. We sat around, dove into the sundae, laughed, and looked out the window at the other brave souls who’d left their apartments in the cold.

I love how the tables at Ample Hills are covered in old ice cream ads. And I love the ice cream. Ample Hills ice cream is the best I’ve ever eaten-and this from a connoisseur who’s sought out every ice cream vendor from Florence, Italy to Maine. It was really lovely to pause on a Saturday afternoon and share a humungous sundae at a cool neighborhood joint together. We might just make it a tradition.

If you’ve never tried HowAboutWe for Couples, you can join as a new member and get $50 off any date in the collection by following this link (offer expires 5/31/14). I think the Chef’s Counter at Nourish Kitchen Date and the Lucy’s Whey Cheese-Inspired Dinner look like so much fun!

With tomorrow being Valentine’s Day, it might be fun to join together, or, if you’re booking a date as a Valentine’s Day present, make sure to click “make it a surprise”!

We went on this date, and I wrote this sponsored post in partnership with HowAboutWe for Couples. Thanks for supporting the sponsors that help inspire BGSK’s content! Photos by Ryan C. Jones.

Let’s be honest. When you’re cooking good cheap food, you can run into textural problems. The staples-pasta, beans, soup, scrambled eggs-share a certain softness that can lead you to down a whole meal without ever having engaged in a proper chew.

Maybe you, like me, want to crunch on something in order to feel like you’ve eaten.

Maybe you, like me, are obsessed with a category of garnish I call crunchies. All I’m saying is: don’t fry up tortilla strips in front of me, because I will eat the whole bowl before they reach the tortilla soup. If you’ve already got the chili simmering or the soup stewing, making crunchies will add just one baking sheet or frying pan to the array of dishes, so if you’re looking for an attainable extra that’ll turn a humble dinner into a fantastic meal, grab a loaf of bread or a package of pita, and get crisping.

For the third year running, I wanted to share a few food resolutions. (Here are last year’s, and here are 2012′s.) I try not to take general new year’s resolving too seriously, mainly because I’m too contrary to do what I tell myself to do, but there are things to look forward to in the kitchen that are just practical enough that I’ll actually do them without rebellion. Read on for what I’m going to change in my small kitchen in 2014.

Here’s a crazy idea: don’t buy a set of plates all at once, but rather pick and choose among vintage and new plates that you adore. Think about it, by the time you’ve broken a few plates and attempted to replace them, you probably have something of a mismatched dozen anyway. So why not start that way to begin with? You’ll love the way a pile of all different plates looks, and you’ll be less heart-broken if one of the breaks. If you suddenly decide you want to have 14 people to Thanksgiving but you only have 12 plates, it’s no problem to order a couple new plates, no stress wasted on wondering if your set is backordered.

Now that you’re convinced, some tips: pick a size or two (dinner and dessert), and stick with it (or them). You’ll want to be able to stack the plates in your cabinet without any of them tottering.

That means they should be roughly the same shape (flat or more curved, for example).

Also, don’t worry about matching. Like, really don’t. Trust that if you like each of your plates, all will have some intangible spirit in common that will transcend any color or pattern matching you might try. If you find two that are similar, that’s okay, but then you’ll want to add something contrasting for balance.

What do you think? Can you imagine hosting a dinner party with mismatched plates?

Follow my Collections on eBay for more shoppable inspiration. #FollowItFindIt

My eBay Collections and this sponsored post were created as part of my collaboration with eBay and Style Coalition. Share my eBay collections for a chance to win $25,000 to shop this holiday on eBay. Official rules. Thanks for supporting the sponsors that help inspire BGSK’s content!

No, that splatter of tomato sauce on the wall by the stove does not count as kitchen decoration.

That revelation is why, as part of my quest to deep clean and sort of redecorate our place, I’ve turned my eye to the kitchen, a place where I spend so much of my time. In a rental apartment, there’s obviously a limit to what you can do, but I’ve been pulling together inspiration for the walls, the tables, and the shelves in a series of new Collections on eBay.

A lot of kitchen essentials are aesthetically pleasing on their own. Vintage prints, from French chocolate advertisements to chili pepper disambiguation charts, can liven up the walls. Beautiful cookbooks, both old and new, help open shelves become warm in a slightly cluttered library-like way. Gorgeous embroidered linens don’t have to hide in the closet – pile them in woven baskets or spread them out on the table, in order to show off the colors and patterns you’ve collected.

My kitchen came with some built-in decoration: a wine rack for showing off pretty bottles and a tile backdrop where we hang out spice rack. I’ve always loved how both of these out in open inspired me to get cooking, which is the ultimate goal of any kitchen decor for a cook–to make the room a place you want to be, well, all the time. So as I thought about what else I could do to show off my love of food and cooking, I loved browsing through the prints, linens, and old cookbooks on eBay and I hope you’ll find them equally inspiring!

How do you decorate your kitchen?