Gabriela Lambert

Making Spring Happen at Barbette

I won’t even begin to discuss the weather this past week -- gray, cold, spitting rain, and even (gasp) snow? Is this fair for Minnesotans? No. Is this normal for Minnesotans? Well, I hate to say it, but yes. And yet, every year we seem to forget what we should never forget: April isn’t really spring. It can be lovely, in bits and snatches here and there with the longer days and the ever-so-slightly warmer sun, but mostly, April reserves the right to be cold and ornery.

 

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The Mill City Farmers Market Kicks Off Another Great Season with a Spring Preview Party

Chances are that if you're reading this article, you already know how awesome the Mill City Farmers Market is. If you happen not to, I have three words for you: Go! It's AWESOME. Whenever we have out-of-town visitors we take them to the Mill City Farmers Market on Saturday morning because, frankly, we are huge show-offs and this market highlights all that we love about our fair city. 

 

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Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with an Irish Rebel Stew

Before I begin, allow me to offer a wee disclaimer: I’m not Irish. Not even a little bit. But I did go to Notre Dame, have never met an Irishman I haven’t liked, and love drinking holidays, which, when you think about it, is basically any holiday if you want it to be.

I also like holiday foods and the fact that my kids are still young enough to get swept up in my concocted celebrations and thereby more likely to try new things to eat. This past Mardi Gras, I made a lovely jambalaya for my family and since it was food for a fest, my kids gobbled it up. Had I made jambalaya on a random Tuesday night, you’d better believe I would still be eating the leftovers.

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A Whole New Kind of Lunch Lady at Emerson Spanish Immersion Learning Center

I don’t know about you, but until recently, the words “lunch lady” conjured less than pleasant memories of crabby women in hairnets glopping mystery meat and mashed potatoes onto plastic trays with ice cream scoops. Had I taken a moment to consider their point of view, I suppose I might have realized how annoying it would be to dish out food, day after day, to disrespectful kids yelling “ewwww, gross!” I’m ashamed to admit that this level of empathy was beyond me in my elementary school years. I was too busy yelling “ewwww, gross!”

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Homemade Beef Jerky Recipe - A Guilty Pleasure Without the Guilt

The things I do for you people! I have made beef jerky FOUR times in the last couple weeks in an attempt to get it right! Now I know why people were giving me the goggle-eyed I’m impressed look when I told them what I was up to. Who knew jerky was so ... jerky? And taking a decent picture of beef jerky – the ugliest food ever – is an impossibility, I assure you.

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Greet the New Year with a Healthy and Delicious Vegetable Soup

I know a lot of people who take the month of January to rein it in, take stock, and press the reset button. Some detox, some jump on the exercise wagon, some just try to focus and center themselves after the frenzy that is December. Personally, I never pass up an excuse for a fresh start, so January is as good a time as any to make myself some promises, which I then inevitably break, for which I have to forgive myself. It’s not a big deal. I don’t feel guilty about it. It’s just how I roll.

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Welcome the Holiday Season with Christmas Empanadas

This is the time of year that finds most people elbow-deep in sugar, butter, vanilla and sprinkles, baking sheet after sheet of Christmas cookies. Me? Not so much. Not that anything would surprise you at this point, but I find myself elbow-deep in something of a more savory nature. Olives, cumin, egg, and ... you guessed it: beef. This is the time of year I make empanadas. Christmas empanadas. OK, maybe it doesn’t have quite the alliterative ring to it that Christmas cookies does, but I don’t think anyone is in a position to quibble with a Christmas empanada.

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Short Rib Barley Soup - Like a Warm Hug from Your Beefiest Friend

If you had told me, even two years ago, that one day I would open up the crisp white butcher paper of a package from Clancey’s Meats and Fish, gasp at the stunning beauty of a couple of beef short ribs and run for my camera, I would have told you you were nuts. If you had told me that I would decide to write my next article about short ribs solely because the picture was so fantastic, I would have told you you were double nuts. If you had told me that while I was going all Richard Avedon on the short ribs, I would simultaneously be cursing myself for not having bought more of them, I would have paused, shrugged and agreed that it sounded like something I might do.

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Secrets and Confessions of an Argentine Carnivore

For someone with a bacon mustache in her bio picture, I realize I have written precious little about meat here in these Simple, Good, and Tasty pages. My swooning and waxing poetic about squash, asparagus, garlic scapes, rhubarb, blueberries, apples and tomatoes (oh, sweet tomatoes) may lead you to believe that I am a feeble carnivore indeed. It just goes to show how eating with the seasons, along with myriad benefits lauded every day here at Simple, Good, and Tasty, has the added perk of increasing one's consumption of fruits and vegetables. To pay attention to what is most ripe and fresh at the farmers market inevitably gets my wheels turning and inspires me to figure out ways to cook and eat those beautiful foods.

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Welcome Apple Season with a Humble Crumble

Isn’t it funny how some days you can be humming along, getting all sorts of things accomplished with nary a thought of fruit crumble, and then someone drops off a bag of Dudley apples from Hauser’s Superior View Farm in Bayfield, Wisconsin, and casually mentions they’re supposed to be good baking apples, and suddenly, you can’t get crumble off the brain? Not even for one minute? Not even for one second?

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