I received a copy of Martha Stewart’s Vegetables cookbook from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. If you’re looking to add more variety to your vegetable cookery game, I recommend this cookbook. It’d be a thoughtful gift as well, if just for the mouthwatering photos.

A wordy title, wouldn’t you say? Martha Stewart’s Vegetables: Inspired Recipes and Tips for Choosing, Cooking, and Enjoying the Freshest Seasonal Flavors. That pretty much sums it up though—with 150 tempting recipes, 80 percent of them meatless, a delectable photo for each recipe, and tons of helpful hints, this is a bright addition to my cookbook shelf.

Here’s a rundown of the recipes I sampled, including a magenta colored beet risotto, and a couple of very tasty pizzas. Continue Reading…

Instant Pot Irish potato kale soup is a blend of potatoes so soft they’re falling apart, with ribbons of dark green kale, mildly sweet leeks, and garlic, all in a rich vegetable broth. Make in your pressure cooker or in your regular soup pot—it’s wonderful either way.

Click here to PIN Instant Pot Irish Potato and Kale Soup!

Just by the name, you can tell this is not the original red velvet cake. This red velvet chocolate beet cake is real chocolate, sweet with honey and sugar, moist with vitamin beet, and frosted with chocolate glaze.

I never did feel the love for that other red velvet cake—the one made with a 2-ounce bottle of red food coloring and 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder. All that red food coloring grosses me out. We’re talking red–bright red!

Back in my pastry chef days, I tinkered to improve the classic red velvet cake recipe. I bumped the chocolate up to something you could taste, and used beet powder for the red. Those cakes tasted okay, and the color was less garish, though some thought the color wasn’t red enough to be red velvet.

I kept thinking, why couldn’t you start with a chocolate cake and fold in fresh grated beets, like you fold grated carrots into carrot cake batter?
Continue Reading…