Cheesy Gnocchi with Squash and Kale is a perfect fall comfort food. This has been in my cold weather recipe rotation for years. 

It's filling, cheesy, vegetarian, and easy to make. Buy pre-cut squash to make things simple.

Costco's got seasonal pumpkins and bats ravioli to get you in the Halloween spirit! The price is just $8.99 for two 16 oz packages. The ravioli are filed with ricotta, mozzarella, parmesan and asiago cheeses. 

They'd be DELICIOUS with a simple butter & parmesan finish or topped with marinara sauce but I wanted to get creative and keep their colors intact for spooky effects. Try the pumpkins and bats with lemon & butter sauce or grab Costco's butternut squash pasta sauce for an autumnal meal.

Get your spooky, seasonal, and EASY meal underway throughout October or on Halloween before you dig into the candy!

I was just in my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA for a visit. One of our city's greatest culinary contributions are Pittsburgh Salads which are LOADED with toppings and french fries!

These salads are a full meal and include veggies, meat, cheese, garlic bread, fries, and anything else you'd like to add. The finishing touch comes from buffalo chicken, grilled steak or shrimp, or even sriracha tofu!

What more can we say or read about Covid-19, staying at home, and how our lives have changed? I've never eaten or cooked at home so much in my entire life.

While it's not easy to find chickpeas in grocery stores these days I eventually did. This recipe patiently waited until that lucky day and it was worth the wait!

​The next time you can get your hands on 30 ounces of chickpeas (also called garbanzo beans) you've got to make these sweet potato & chickpea bowls.

For more recipes like this one check out the recipes page. 

This recipe is perfect! It's got warm and cool ingredients, smooth, soft, and crunchy textures, and it's super nourishing. It requires only ONE cooking step, roasting the seasoned sweet potatoes and chickpeas in the oven, and you're done.

These sweet potato & chickpea bowls make a great lunch or an outdoor dinner for a warm day. You could even set up an assembly line of the toppings and let your hungry friends and family build their own bowls. 

I found the recipe in Bon Appetit Magazine's March 2020 edition and made a few modifications of my own. 

Maybe you've never had a fig. If you haven't and I handed you one you'd say: "I don't even know how to eat this!" 

Well here we are: I've made a whole list, complete with pictures, for how to eat figs. Your first fig should be fresh, right from the tree. You can eat it all, the skin and the inside, just not top of the stem. There's no seed inside. Just take a BIG OLE BITE. Then, once you're in love, use this list to get creative with your new favorite fruit. 
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I love figs, clearly, as I've named my blog in honor of them. It all started in the backyard of  my Pap Pap (that's Pittsburgh-speak for Grandfather) when I was a kid. He'd pull fresh figs right off of the tree and he'd let me eat as many as I wanted! The hard part, back then, was waiting for the figs to be in season. The hard part, still, is waiting for the figs to be in season! 

Pap sold that house when I was in second grade and went to the eternal fig tree in the sky when I was in college. Good news, though, I grew up and bought a house that came complete with a yard and a fig tree! I never feel my Pap's spirit more than when I'm back there picking figs and eating them without a care in the world (see photo of me IN the tree).

​Those of you who've been reading my blogs since the old days might remember my older blog and "The House with the Fig Tree" stories from when we'd just moved in to our house.