Over Thanksgiving seven years ago, my husband suggested we get a crock pot. I have no idea where this came from since this is the man who cooks nothing but the occasional Thanksgiving turkey or Christmas roast. But I thought he was onto something. After all, we had an infant at the time and another mom friend of mine had been raving about the simplicity of dinner in the slow cooker prepared during naptime.

Next thing I knew, the slow cooker appeared under the Christmas tree, complete with a recipe book that I think contributes to the negative image of the slow cooker (read: lots of recipes using cans of soup and cheese sauce). I was a bit hesitant about embracing the crock pot, as I had a notion that they were relics leftover from the 1970s. But slow cookers seem hip now, with Williams-Sonoma selling $300 All-Clad versions and a plethora of more sophisticated cookbooks to maximize their results.

We are in prime slow cooker season, so I have been testing some recipes recently. Last weekend I made Real Simple’s Slow Cooker Smoky Pea Soup. The whole family enjoys split pea and ham soup, and true to its name, this one was really simple to make, and was tasty though it felt like cheating. Confession: technically I did cheat since I did not use a ham hock; I used a diced ham steak, but the results are equally good. It also provided enjoyable lunch leftovers for a few days.

Speaking of cheating, here is my favorite slow cooker trick: pulled pork. We invited some good friends over for a casual Sunday dinner a few weeks ago. I decided to make pulled pork in the slow cooker. I literally placed a boneless pork loin roast in the slow cooker and covered it with a bottle of barbecue sauce, put the lid on and let it go for about 7 hours. Once cooked, I shredded it, tossed it in the sauce, and served it on yummy, oversized pretzel rolls. Our friends raved. I had to confess it was a complete cheater’s meal. This dinner of pulled pork sandwiches, roasted sweet potato wedges and a green salad required literally a 5-item purchase at Trader Joe’s: the meat, the barbecue sauce, the rolls, a bag of sweet potatoes and a bag of salad!

Maybe next time I shouldn’t confess just how easy the slow cooker makes my life and just let everyone think I’ve been slaving over a hot stove all day.

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There is something about the transformation of a simple cut of pork into sausages and salumis that smacks of alchemy. Our relationship with Italian delicacies like prosciutto, pancetta, and mortadella is usually limited to ordering them from the deli counter of a market or Italian specialty food store, so it’s easy to believe that this feat can only be accomplished by aging nonnas laboring away somewhere in a hill town outside of Bologna. We assume they know things about pork and charcuterie that we could never hope to, so we step to the counter and humbly order our quarter pound of sopressata like everyone else.

I never considered trying to cure pork on my own until I found myself far from the dependable supply lines of Italian food that I had become accustomed to when living in my native Boston. While staring at an overpriced, watery, shrink-wrapped hunk of pancetta in a market recently, I decided that it was time to give it a go. I wanted to make linguini carbonara—the first thing other than Trader Joe’s microwaveable burritos that I learned to cook—and I wasn’t going to make it with this unsavory looking pancetta.

Pancetta is often referred to as “Italian bacon” but the label falls short of describing its unique flavor. Unlike its American cousin, pancetta isn’t smoked, so it imparts a more subtle flavor to dishes rather than dominating them. It’s excellent not only in classic pasta sauces like carbonara and amatriciana but also with vegetables such as asparagus.

Curing your own pancetta is probably the most rewarding of all home charcuterie projects. It requires few specialized ingredients (which you can order from Butcher & Packer) and is quick to prepare. And the result is phenomenal. Your home-cured pancetta will surpass what you can get locally and will give something extra to everyday dishes.

Making pancetta does require one ingredient you’ll want to track down locally: pork belly. If you don’t have a butcher nearby, try a local Asian market, as they typically carry pork belly in their meat section. In terms of technical knowledge, all you need to learn to make pancetta is how to roll and tie the pork belly once it has been cured, something you can pick up relatively quickly from a Cook’s Illustrated tutorial. And drying the cured pancetta can be done easily using spare space in your wine fridge or a cool basement.

I won’t tell you that making your own pancetta is entirely simple or that I didn’t make a few mistakes along the way. I managed to knock the bowl of curing mix I had carefully prepared off the counter and found myself trying to fend off my two golden retrievers—intent on cleaning up for me—with one hand while trying to scoop the curing mix into a dust bin. But that’s part of home cooking. It’s never as simple as it seems on television, but the results are always worth it.

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Bacon has gotten a bad reputation as a greasy diner food that has no place in a healthy diet; but cooks can use bacon to add punch to otherwise boring meals without going overboard. I think the larger problem with this salt-satisfying cured pork product is that although it is easy to cook, it’s messy and sometimes painful (splatters! ouch!) with intense cleanup. And the house can smell like bacon for days.

When I have bacon on hand, I will cook a pound in the oven on a Sunday evening and then use it sparingly during the week. If the idea of cooking an entire pound is too much for you, just do one tray and freeze the other half-pound for another week. This method is simple, easy to clean up, and creates amazingly flat slices of cooked bacon. The odor dissipates more quickly, and best of all, you don’t have to stand over a hot stove nursing your splattered skin as you try to turn the slices over.

We like to make BLT’s on whole wheat bread with a side of vinaigrette-dressed slaw. This makes a quick dinner on a night when we’re all running out to meetings, practice, and coffee dates. It’s also a perfect solution to a morning playdate that spills over into lunch.

When I have cooked bacon on hand I dice and sprinkle it onto baked potatoes with light sour cream to create a restaurant-style “loaded” baked potato; crumble and top creamy soups such as chowders or potato soups for maximum crowd-appeal; and dice and add just a slice or two to big leafy salads with slices of grilled chicken, shrimp, or steak.

My personal favorite? Add the pre-cooked bacon to a quiche for a fancy lunch with friends and add a salad on the side. Once you have mastered the basic method for quiche, the variations are endless. Quiche is elegant for entertaining during the day–even if you have vegetarian guests, because it is just as easy to make two pies–one with bacon or ham, one without. When I made this heavenly Zucchini, Bacon, and Gruyere Quiche, I roasted the bacon in the oven and sauteed the veggies in olive oil. I also used a favorite brand of frozen pie crust to save time. (Cheater method: you can even use pre-cooked bacon!)

In the winter I aim for one type of soup per week. Unfortunately, my husband doesn’t see soup as a satisfying meal unless it contains fatty meat products and is accompanied by bread of some sort (sound familiar?), so I try to add things to round out our dinner. I used to stop at a bakery for fresh bread on soup day, but now that I have two busy kids I find that extra stop to be a chore. Savory Bacon and Cheddar Muffins are easy to pull together (you can make the batter the night before and scoop and bake at dinner time) and are a good complement to a soup or salad meal. Vary them by using herbs or other cheeses, or diced ham in place of the bacon if that’s what you have on hand.

And one last surprise. No, no, I am not giving you a bacon-laced fruit dish here–instead another rather unexpectedly delicious flavor combination: Maple-Laced Bacon & Chocolate Chip Cookies. Make them for a tailgate party or any other gathering that includes the meat-loving people in your life.

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We were in Sète, France, my first French host family and I, lazing about for a week at their summer abode. Every morning I would run through the terraced seaside town, hoping to sweat out every gram of chocolate I’d filched the day prior.

I was sixteen, and a wannabe vegetarian. But I’d been too polite to tell the Provençal family who’d taken me in that I didn’t eat meat. Au contraire, the more they piled onto my plate, the more I ate.

There were lamb chops and grilled sardines that we inhaled until our teeth clanked against the bones, headcheese and calf’s testicles that I thought would land me in the local clinic. Every chance I got–breakfast, late afternoon and even late night–I’d steal a hunk of baguette with butter, jam or Nutella. A sweet antidote to all those other toxins I was pumping into my body. Or so I thought.

I ran because I fretted about what my mother would say when I got off the plane back in New York. Oh, honey, we sent you to France and you gained ten pounds?!

The day Colette was making la bourride for lunch I was, literally, running late. The creamy fish stew, a local specialty, was coughing up its last few bubbles atop the stove when I got back, and Colette was already snipping the fresh parsley to be sprinkled about at the last minute.

In one hand she held a juice glass crammed with the bright green leaves. In the other, a pair of kitchen shears. She plunged the blades into the glass, and just like that, thwack thwack thwack, she minced those little herbs to merciless content. Transfixed by her handiwork, I dawdled even longer. My mother never cut herbs like that!

I thought of this accidental lesson recently when I opened up a surprise package of cookbooks sent to me by Colette, and it was the 30th frigid day in a row, and suddenly all I wanted was a burst of spring on my tongue.

I went to the market, stocked up on fresh herbs and put together an herb salad concocted by Patricia Wells (much like this one). I paired it with a creamy mushroom risotto, and some fresh parsley snipped à la Colette.

It seemed like a fitting anecdote to tell in my first Plummelo blog post, because that summer in France was my first taste of culture shock. I was thoroughly, deliciously out of my comfort zone, and the second I got home was–to my surprise–the second I wanted to go back. As a working journalist, I get paid to replicate that feeling almost every day. But I don’t write about myself. Ever.

I’m guessing it’ll take some time for me to get comfortable with this forum, but I’m looking forward to the chance to share with you all kinds of thoughts about putting food on the table, and feeding the ones you love. I’m counting on you to tell me your own stories, from the good days and the bad!

While there are days of the week that call for marching out of your culinary comfort zone, everybody needs a handy trick or two that can quickly transform a kid’s dish into an adult’s delight, a banal arrangement into a bright set of bites. Snipping fresh herbs is one of those quick fixes; it turns a cumbersome task into a cinch. Just make sure your shears are clean and your herbs patted dry.

As a bonus, I give you this recipe for a baked risotto. Purists will say that baking rice in liquid does not a true risotto make, but I find this rendition comes pretty close to replicating the creamy, luxurious finish you’re seeking. It’s perfect on a weeknight when you don’t have time to babysit the stockpot, stirring stirring stirring.

What more can I say for now? Bon appétit!

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And, I’d imagine, to the food-passionate circles of which I dream of being part, such a declaration would be akin to telling, say, a whale activist that I like everything about saving whales except for having to actually cut those storied nets and save them.

I read food magazines and chef memoirs. I study recipes. I watch as much cooking as my basic cable package allows. I bore (and quite possibly drive away) those around me with talk of meals way before and way after the fact.

And see? You’re probably already thinking, “Wow. How unique of you.”

Yes, in the eyes of the walk-the-walk cooking world, I’m just another non-low-brow American with an appetite.

But, to be honest, I just don’t have any major desire to really start cooking. Or at least not quite yet. Because it doesn’t make sense for my life quite yet. Cooking for myself in an apartment that boasts not even the tiniest splash of countertop; purchasing ingredients with a bank account that’s overdrawn bi-weekly; preparing said ingredients to almost surely come out inedible—it all strikes me as a bit masochistic, if anything. Practice makes perfect, yes, but practicing is expensive. And demands a countertop.

Is this wrong though? Does a love for all things food have to be yoked with the actual act of cooking in order to be legitimate? In terms of my aforementioned social aspirations, I think it does. Without having experienced the process of bringing meals to life, I fear that my passion comes off as unsubstantiated. I can spend my days sitting in my counterless apartment-for-one romanticizing the world of food, but until I’ve experienced its less romantic aspects (save for weight gain), can it really be called love?

Well, it certainly is love, but perhaps to please the masses and silence my insecurities, I should just make something. I am 25 years old, after all. And if anything, it’d be interesting to see what my obsession is capable of bringing to life.

Step one: a salad! How about Cilantro Lime Crab Salad? But with plain Greek yogurt in place of the mayonnaise. A salad is something I can keep in the fridge. And one which I don’t feel guilty about picking at compulsively. Lean proteins. Vegetables. Happy fats.

Wish me luck…

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Life in my social circle is one food related adventure after another, and this February has been no different. A few weeks back, a friend threw a pickle party, where everyone buys or makes their own pickled something or other. (I know: something about me draws in the culinary eccentricity. I’ve learned to embrace it.) I was smitten with the idea; themed food parties can be so fun!

When one ingredient, preparation process, or general theme is made universal, creativity and playfulness (two of my favorite elements in cooking) often come to the fore. For example, when the same friend moved out of her old apartment in August, she had a rather more racily themed “Skin and Bare It” party to beat the heat. All food needed to be able to be unwrapped or peeled in some way; ingredients ranged from pistachios to bananas to Fruit Roll-Ups. Interpretation is half the joy: at an egg party, for example, there’s custard, meringues, quiche of all stripes. And if you broaden things to encompass egg shaped foods, you’ve opened your doors for festivals of olives, kumquats, and jelly beans to come dancing through.

As friends rushed to find the most perfect gravlax recipe, or hunted down the platonic ideal of sake lee (a byproduct of the fermentation process) to cure small vegetables, I thought about what inspires me in food. Color, texture, and surprise were the answers I came up with–and with grey skies outside, I thought I might like a reminder that summer is coming back one day. Enter the pickled watermelon radish.

A derivative of daikon radishes, watermelon radishes are milder and not as spicy as their red-skinned cousins. When pickled, they take on a sweet, tangy taste that is at first at odds with their appearance (you expect a fruit to be lurking within those bright pink speckles), but gradually comes to win you over.

It was so exciting to see what everyone came up with. There were pickled sausages, pickled carrots, pickled peppers (not even close to a peck, though, by the time we were done). The aforementioned gravlax was a sincerely incredible capstone to the night; weeks later I’m still dreaming about it. And pickletinis, which had been threatened but (foolishly) not taken seriously by me, ended up being a surprise hit.

The guest who traveled farthest for the party, a preserving fanatic who came in from Northampton, brought something very special with her. It was pineapple, apple, and almond kimchi; the subtle complexity of tastes was lovely, and would be a great addition to the upcoming Greater Boston Kimchi Festival. And we’re off to the races again: another month, another odyssey of edible oddity. But it gets me sharing food with friends and keeps me smiling–and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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More often than not, I come home from the kindergarten pick-up at 11:30 and start the scavenger hunt for lunch. I am usually so hungry and know it will take a few minutes, so I start nibbling on something while I make my daughter’s lunch and figure out what I am going to eat. I grab a Diet Coke and reach for my old standby, pretzels. This gets me nowhere, really… because then I am thinking “what goes with pretzels and Diet Coke?”

My lunch often ends up as a veggie burger or a wrap of some kind–maybe turkey and avocado or tuna salad, maybe leftover beans and rice. Almost anything tastes good in a tortilla. (I much prefer wraps to sandwiches.)

I am now trying, when possible, to actually plan lunch. Leftovers from the previous night’s dinner are often a good choice. Otherwise I go to the wrap.

On occasion though, I have a friend over for lunch. This really requires planning. I have a couple of ideas in my mental stash for when I need an above average lunch.

One of my favorites is chicken salad, which–you guessed it–I make into a wrap. My favorite is Cranberry Almond Chicken Salad. Using a rotisserie chicken as the base is my preference, but when that’s not possible, I cook and dice breasts. In a real pinch I have found canned will suffice (I like the Kirkland premium chunk chicken from Costco). When possible, of course, I make enough chicken salad to last two lunches.

Another of my favorite lunches that I have been known to serve to company is a grain-based salad. If I am not entertaining, I make a big bowl of it to last a few days. If you take lunch to work or school, these salads travel easily in a container as well.

One of my favorites is barley with black eyed peas, tomatoes, diced red or yellow peppers and corn tossed with a lime vinegarette.

Quinoa and wheat berry salads are also among my favorites. I have made all of these (see box) and several other variations.

While there is some prep time required, especially for the wheat berries (which must simmer for almost an hour), I find these dishes completely worth the time. Not only are they quite nutritious, but definitely hearty, and I have also found they can easily impress a friend.

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I have discovered a great recipe for keeping the little ones busy and productive, while creating an easy and healthy lunch at the same time: make-your-own-pizza!

I got this idea from those highly desired prepackaged bento-box-style lunches.

Just throw some whole wheat pizza dough (homemade or store-bought) on each child’s plate, and them them poke and prod to make the dough somewhat flat (clean hands are a plus). Let them sauce up the dough using regular marinara or pizza sauce from a jar–or better yet, make your own. Then let them shower their creation with oodles of mozzarella (or whatever cheese the kids like), pepperoni, and–most importantly–veggies! I chopped up steamed broccoli, peas, and colorful strips of peppers ahead of time.

The easiest part? Pop it in a preheated 425 degree oven for only 5-7 minutes and the mini works of art are ready for consumption. A quick, easy, and healthy lunch that they got to make on their own… what else can you ask for in a meal?

Our kids had an awesome time making and eating them. They made a smiley face and other designs their imagination inspired. It was fun not only for the kids, but also for the mommies because of the easy prep. All of the ingredients were found at my local Trader Joe’s: my go-to place for quick and healthy ingredients. Try this activity the next time you host a play date for your kids. You will enjoy your little chefs’ creativity, really love that they are actually having fun and eating their veggies, and share quality time as their sous chef in the kitchen.

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I was a self-taught cook—mainly by trial and error. Most cooks learned from an older family member who knew their way around the kitchen blindfolded and had all their treasured recipes in their head (with no quantities, they just knew). My mother will admit that she is not the most enthusiastic cook, and I didn’t live near enough to my grandmothers growing up to learn in that manner like so many women do. My sister wasn’t into it until much later, and so I was pretty much on my own.

I envy that, for my aunt (who learned much of her cooking from my grandmother), putting a delicious home-cooked meal on the table for us is not only an expression of love but also she makes it look effortless. So I asked her what her secrets are.

Make ahead. She takes full advantage of a spare freezer in the garage and pulls out what she needs when she needs it. She made ahead the stuffed chicken breasts so that she didn’t have to spend quite as much time cooking on our weekend together. She baked them on a cookie sheet and they were magically ready at dinnertime (this is the seemingly effortless skill to which I referred). Same for the beef stew and the cake. I’m sure it was hard work for her, but to the untrained eye, she seemed to whip it all up in a matter of an hour.

Avoid tending to something on the stove. I watched her chop a few sweet potatoes and throw them into a crock pot with some butter. She could then set the gadget on high for 6 hours and avoid babysitting a pot. This is one trick I will surely try at home. The mashed sweet potatoes were perfectly creamy and melted in my mouth.

Canning and freezing fresh fruit and vegetables when they are in season. This deserves its own post.

See what I learned in a few short days of watching a more experienced cook? These lessons are invaluable.

My sister, whose husband is half Italian-American, tells me that her mother-in-law is her primary go-to source at holidays. And both of us have been known to call upon our step-mother, who also cooks by heart, for those big-piece-of-meat type dinners.

We always seem to call on those who have trodden the road before us, and they always seem to have the answers–because they learned from the generations before them.

Who do you look to for lessons in cooking?

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When I was invited to join the group, I had hesitations. Making dinner for a football team’s worth of people seemed daunting, and the initial outlay of money in ingredients was a bit stressful–cooking for myself meant that hefty grocery bills could be mentally amortized across a week or two. There were also the ideological considerations: all of us were vegetarians, but at the time I was much less adventurous than most. My friend Ray, while breathlessly encouraging me to jump onboard, rhapsodized about an entree based largely on tempeh they had all enjoyed the previous week; I felt myself subtly recoil. Tempeh?

Ultimately, the one incontrovertibly strong deciding factor that impelled me to say yes was my own need for connection. What drew me to the group initially–along with Ray and several other members of the group, both male and female–was the fact that it represented something all of us were craving. A healthier relationship with food, a familiar and beautiful ritual in the middle of days that often felt uncertain, the chance to nurture those you cared about when you previously hadn’t been sure you could even take care of yourself: dinner group offered our group of twenty- and thirty-somethings a chance to actively shape who we wanted to be as eaters and sharers of food.

The 12 friends split into 6 pairs and each duo cooked a dinner for the group once every 2 weeks. That was the simple part. I quickly learned to scale up my cooking for many people, plan menus to stretch ingredients, and cook multiple courses simultaneously on my two-burner studio apartment kitchenette. (The secret there is to constantly stay in motion; cooking becomes a kind of high speed, twirling ballet.)

What excited me most was the thrill of menu planning. While not overly competitive, I will admit that all of us quickly learned what each pair’s strong points were–and that we took pleasure in outdoing ourselves week after week. Over dinner, we’d talk about classes, our jobs, our hopes, and dreams. Sharing each other’s homes and tables night after night led to a desire to nurture each other–and also a desire to surprise.

One group excelled at inventive salads; another pair’s forte was exquisite Southern comfort food. Two others provided wonderful picnic-esque spreads (they were living on a boat at the time, so this was no surprise). My partner and I specialized in combining unusual, unexpected tastes.

For me, these often took the form of desserts–including the quirkily titled beeramisu, which has become a staple of mine. (Don’t let the name fool you; it’s a subtle and elegant dessert. I usually replace the stout with a fruity Belgian beer, like Lindemans Frambois Lambic or Peche.)

The experience of needing to pull food together quickly while keeping it fresh and exciting has become a signature part of my cooking style. Cooking for multiple people, while it can initially seem like a chore, becomes an incredible gift when what you’re doing is using food to make people think, or smile, or open up. I treasure what I learned about myself in that group, the capacity I discovered that I have to give.

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