I knew I’d get you with that title because honestly, who doesn’t want to wow their mom, wife, grandma or even daughter this Mother’s Day???

Up until a year ago I held cooking classes every month.  They were wonderful and we cooked all types of food from Thai, Indian, Italian, and Greek to learning how to master healthy foods like greens, grains and beans.  However with JamieLiving going hog wild (yahoo!) the last 12 months and my attention being needed elsewhere, the cooking classes were put by the wayside.  And though I get asked for cooking classes regularly, I now only have time for the rare and special cooking event.

Which is why I am SO excited to share what’s been up at JamieLiving in the cooking department!

A few months ago I combined wonder-woman forces with Alexis Koefoed, the lovely owner of Soul Food Farm, and together we decided to create an amazing Mother’s Day Cooking Class!  Awesome, right??  I know!

On Saturday, March 12 we are opening up Alexis’ beautiful farm kitchen to 12 lucky mothers and daughters who are ready to eat, dance, cook and connect with the women they love most in the world.  (Aunties, Godmothers, Step-Moms, and BFFs are welcome as too!)  A woman learns how to eat by watching the women in her life and as the kitchen is the center of the home, it is where life in the form of delicious food is created and sustained.  This unique cooking class is your chance to connect with the lady you love most and share with her the true joy of cooking!

My beautiful mom and me where we connect best…in the kitchen!

This delicious mother-daughter day is meant to tantalize your taste buds, stimulate your senses and leave you with a profound understanding of what to eat and how to cook it for your beautiful body!

For more details and to snag your spot, CLICK HERE.

We have done very little marketing and already the class is 33% FULL!  The tickets are goin’ like hotcakes.   (Or organic kale cakes!)

This class is about sharing a deeply delicious experience with your mother or daughter. It doesn’t matter whether you cook every day or rarely step foot in the kitchen.  This class is for all levels and is all about getting your mother/daughter food groove on!!

What can you expect from the cooking class?  Click here to find out!

How do you know the Mother-Daughter Divinely Delicious Cooking Class is right for you?  Read HERE, sweetness, read HERE!

I can tell you right now that this class is going to fill up!  If you want have an amazingly unique experience with the woman you love, where you both learn to feed your tummies, hearts and minds, snag your spot RIGHT NOW!

Know any great women you’d like to invite?  Feel free to pass the event on!

This is the year that a card and flowers simply won’t do.  Sign up today and get excited for a Mother’s Day neither of you will ever forget!

In the comments below, tell me what is the best Mother’s Day you’ve ever had?  What made it so special?  What are you tips for making Mother’s Day memorable?

Also, be sure to share the Mother’s Day LOVE with Today’s Tweetable!

 Much love and I will see you on the farm!

I could eat salad every day….and do, actually.  I’m pretty sure Gray and I eat a small farm’s worth of greens every week.  Sometimes when I think about all the cabbage, red leaf, green leaf, butter lettuce, arugula, radishes and fresh herbs I ingest, I really do wonder, “Where does it all go?”  And after a quick “thank you” to my body for digesting it all, I dive right back in.  With my love of raw vegetable combinations you might think I’m one of those ladies who orders salad when lunching with her other lady friends.  This, I can assure you, never happens!  (The salad part, not the ladies lunching part.)  Honestly, I rarely order salads out because I value my salad experience far too much.  Most salads are dry, flat, flavorless disasters to which you must add a ton of thin, uninteresting dressing just to make it passable.  I shouldn’t be so tough on those little leaves. It’s not their fault they are forced into plastic bags, their juiciness being sucked away moment by moment as they ride in a truck on the way to your local Trader Joes or Safeway.  Granted, there are locally-focused restaurants that have beautiful salads, but more often than not you are presented with a sad state of salad affairs that you obligingly eat because you should “eat your greens”.

I’m sure you are thinking, “Jamie sounds like a raving lunatic.  It’s only salad, for goodness sake!”  And yes, you are right.  However good salad, really, truly amazing salad is a rarity for which I would happily forgo any rich meaty dish or even, dare I say it, dessert.  Whenever invited to a dinner party I always bring salad, and without fail I am asked, “How did you make this?  This is the best salad I have ever had!”  I smile and say, “It’s not me, its the ingredients.”  So, are you ready to learn how to make a brilliant salad that will make you and your guests cry for joy?  Alright then, let’s go!

Secrets For Super Sexy Salad

(And if you are wondering what makes any salad sexy, I’ll tell you.  Any time something delicious and juicy hits your tongue and you allow yourself to sit and savor it, you are transported to a seriously pleasurable and dare I say, sexy place.  Yes, salad can be just as sensuous as lamb stew or chocolate fondue.  You just need to give the good stuff a try!)

#1-  Buy whole heads of lettuce-  This keeps you away from the dry, mealy stuff and opens up an entirely new world of plump leaves that beg to be eaten.  Leaves and stems should be firm, not floppy, and feel moist to the touch but not soggy.

#2-  Mix it up-  Experiment with multiple types of lettuce rather than sticking to boring ole’ romaine.   Red leaf, green leaf, arugula, escarole, chicories, red butter, and green butter are all different varieties of lettuce that entice the palate and keep you interested.  I love mixing different lettuces in my salad to create varying colors and textures.  (The gorgeous maroon-colored lettuce below is what I picked up at today’s Farmer’s Market.  Talk about mixin’ it up!)

#3-  Texturize-   There are countless reasons why most salads are flat, however a big one is lack of texture.  Just eating lettuce with a spinkle of Parmesan is a one note experience and as you know, you want eating to be a symphony. (Like how I did that?)   You want wet, dry, crunchy, and creamy co-mingling and gettin’ comfy on the salad plate.  Red and watermelon radishes, red/green cabbage, avocado, goat cheese, blue cheese, jicama, and even pickled cauliflower provide texture and taste that impart life to your salad.

#4-  Go nuts- For me, salad does not hit that divine place until it is topped with some kind of nut or seed.  Nuts and seeds add crunchy, fatty awesomeness that take a good salad to great.  I recommend toasting your nuts/seeds before using them as heat brings our their richness and flavor.  And please do not get sucked into only using almonds.  (I know you!)  Try sunflower seeds, pumpkins seeds, walnuts, cashews, pecans, and hazelnuts.  Each has a unique offering so experiment and see which you like best.

#5- Touch of sweetness-  This is a husband request as my man is more of a sweety while I’m a salty dawg.  However, I will admit that many times a touch of fruit is exactly what the doctor ordered.  Adding fruit to your salad should change with the seasons which helps keep you from getting stuck in an apple rut.  In the Spring add strawberries.  In the Summer, a plum, peach, nectarine or pluot.  I adore pears in salad in the fall and for winter, toss in a few orange segments, grapefruit or persimmon.  Remember, this is not a “fruit salad” but rather using a touch of fruit for balance of flavor.  For a salad for 2, I use 1/2 a piece of fruit.

#6-  Dress it up-  This is where most people get it wrong.   Repeat after me:  ”I will no longer outsource my salad dressings!”  Most people grab bottled salad dressings because they believe homemade versions are too hard.  Oh, how wrong you are.  First know, almost every salad I make gets dressed in the same way.  Unfiltered, cold pressed olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sea salt and pepper.  DONE!  Sometimes I work in a bit of Dijon mustard, Parmesan cheese, and lemon juice but that really is about it.  I prefer my dressing to be light rather than rich & creamy so as to get the vegetables’ tasty story.  Think of dressing as an enhancer, the finishing bow on an already beautiful present.

There you have it.  The secrets to super sexy salad every time!  Please experiment with these tips and let me know what you come up with.  Of course, with all this salad talk it would be down right wrong to leave you without recipe to try.  I made this salad for our 20 person New Year’s Eve party and truth be told, it was more popular than the champagne. The sweet and crunch of the cabbage played perfectly against the spicy nature of the arugula and onion.

It is also the perfect salad for a romantic Valentine’s dinner.  Pair with a glass of jammy Zinfandel and dark chocolate and honestly, you can let gettin’ it on be the main course.   Enjoy!

Arugula & Cabbage Salad

Arugula and Cabbage Salad with Onion, Lemon and Parmesan

You will notice here that I’ve broken rule #4 as there are no nuts or seeds to be seen in this recipe.  The beauty of rules is they are made to broken and so I took the liberty of making this salad sans-nuts.  However toasted hazelnuts, if you felt so inclined, would be delicious on this.

Serves 4

1/2 a small red onion

Juice of 1 lemon

1 teaspoon organic honey

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Sea salt and pepper to taste

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

3 cups green cabbage, finely sliced

2 handfuls arugula

1/2 cup raw Parmesan cheese, freshly grated

Soak the sliced onions in a small bowl of cold water for 20 minutes while prepping the rest of the salad.  In a small bowl whisk together the lemon juice, honey, mustard, and a touch of salt and pepper.  Whisk in the olive oil until the dressing is well combined.  Set aside.

Cut the cabbage in half and then one of the halves, into quarters.  With a sharp knife, slice two of the quarters of the cabbage into thin strips and place the second cabbage half in the fridge for later use.  This should be about 2 cups.   Place the cabbage in a bowl with the arugula, the drained onions and the dressing.  Fold in the Parmesan cheese, taste and adjust the seasonings if necessary.

Cassoulet is for serious people.  Make no mistake, when you put 5 kinds of meat (traditionally pork sausage, pork shoulder, goose, duck and pork skin) into a single dish, you are not messing around.  I, on the other hand, am not a serious person and tend to take things as lightly as I can.  Life just feels better that way.  Don’t get me wrong, I can certainly get agro about work, traffic and the occasional family meltdown but other than that, I try to let things flow.  However, cassoulet is not a flowing kind of a dish.  In fact it’s down right anti-flow as after a single bowl of rich, meaty goodness, you aren’t going any where for a while.  And yet, this traditional casserole from the south of France has always piqued my interest.  Even as a card carrying vegetarian/vegan I often thought how I could possibly make a cassoulet Jamie-friendly.

First a definition: Cassoulet is a slow-cooked meat and white bean stew that receives its name from the ceramic vessel cassole in which it is cooked.  Though cassoulet means a very specific thing in France, in the good ole’ U.S. of A. it is often used as a fancy term for any combination of meat and beans.  As a vegetarian, my first cassoulet experiment came in the form of this roasted garlic and butternut squash recipe.  I left out the meat (of course), yet since I was serving it to a bunch of other vegetarians, no one cared that I called it a cassoulet.  (At the time I didn’t have any French friends either, so that was helpful.)   It was an awesome dish and one that I whipped out every fall when squash season came around.  And then I started eating meat.  Oh meat how I do love thee.  Particularly paired with beautiful beans.  And yet I’m still not serious enough to make a real cassoulet.

Honestly, I’m intimidated by all that meat.  It just seems excessive, no?  I’m also not a big super fatty, crazy-rich dish fan.  It’s not that I’m a food prude, my palate just doesn’t swing that way.  So here is my first meat attempt at cassoulet.   Serious traditionalists please turn away as I can tell you right now this will cause you pain.   However if you want an extremely tasty chicken and bean stew, this dish will make you very happy!

And for those of you who are curious, here is a recipe that is the real deal…

Roasted Chicken Cassoulet

I made this recipe gluten free however if you are gluten full, before adding the parsley, top the dish with homemade breadcrumbs and throw it in the oven for a few minutes to crisp up.  Quite delicious!

Serves 4

4 ounces organic pancetta, chopped (optional though highly recommend)

2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil

2 onions, thinly sliced

1 garlic clove, minced

½ cup white wine (you can also use 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar)

2 tablespoons tomato paste

3 cups chicken broth

2 15-ounce cans of great Northern or cannellini beans, drained and rinsed (Go for the Eden brand as they are BPA-free)

2 carrots, peeled and cut into ½ inch rounds

3 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves removed from the stem

1 sprig fresh oregano, leaves removed from the stem and chopped

1 bay leaf

Salt and pepper taste

3 cups leftover roasted chicken thighs, cut into chunks **

1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped

Heat a heavy bottomed pot or Dutch oven and add the pancetta.  Sauté until crisp and remove with a slotted spoon, leaving the drippings in the pot.   Add the olive oil, onions and a pinch of salt to the pot and cook until golden brown, about 12 minutes. Add the garlic and wine and simmer for about 2 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste and broth.

Add the beans, carrots, thyme, oregano, bay leaf, salt, pepper and bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 20 minutes or until the carrots are tender.  Add the chicken and cook for another 3-5 minutes.  If the stew is thin, let it cook, uncovered for a few minutes.  If it is too thick, add a bit more broth.  Taste to adjust the seasoning and top with chopped parsley and an extra drizzle of olive oil.

**If you are using fresh chicken, heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat and sear 4 skinless, boneless chicken thighs in a single layer. Cook, turning once, until browned on both sides, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Season with salt and pepper.  Transfer to a plate and when cool, cut into chunks.  Add the cooked chicken at step 4.

I have been traveling like nobody’s business.  In fact, Gray and I have been out of town for the last 6 weekends in a row and yes, it has been as fun and exhausting as it sounds.  Among these many weekends we had an amazing trip to Monterey, complete with the most divine calamari of my LIFE and a stop at Happy Girl Kitchen plus a gut-busting, food-frenzied four days in Portland.  (Post up-coming.)  Traveling is certainly exciting as is exploring a city’s hot new restaurants however after so many plates of other people’s food, I start to crave my own.  And so upon our immediate return home this past Sunday, I hunkered down in the kitchen and went a little crazy.  In 3 hours I made a pot of chicken soup, braised cabbage, sesame cookies, blueberry truffles, and curried butternut squash.  And then I made a frittata and sauteed kale for dinner.  Yes my people, I was on a roll and not stopping until everything in my fridge had been prepped, chopped and cooked.  Shockingly, it didn’t seem like a lot of work at the time but rather soothing and meditative as I got back into the rhythm of my kitchen.   But don’t let this vision of domestic bliss fool you.  This cooking haze doesn’t always happen.  Sometimes when we get back from traveling I’m resentful that I now have to cook after days of sitting in a restaurant and having food placed before me with zero effort on my part.  I envision stealing away the chef to be my daily cook and think how wonderful it would be to never wash lettuce again.  And then I come back to reality, remembering that though I enjoy occasional food pampering, I love cooking and (big shocker here!) like be in control of what goes on my plate.

As we are deep into Fall I thought I’d share with you one of my oldest standbys.  Say hello to roasted butternut squash!  If you cook often, this dish is nothing new.  However, the beauty of roasted squash is its inexhaustible flexibility.  For every season I have a list of must-make recipes and roasted winter squash is one I wait for all year.  The most difficult part of using winter squash is breaking the freakin’ thing down.  Cutting open a butternut or kabocha squash can be intimidating enough to forgo the entire endeavor but I promise you, it is SO totally worth it.  In the middle of cutting open a squash I always question why I put myself through such vegetable torment, then I taste my final product and remember.  Oh right, because it is yum-tastic!

The below recipe is a great take on the standard roasted butternut squash.  Also, here is a quick list of how I like to use said squash once roasted:

Eat directly as a snack or side dish

Add to French green lentils and cranberries for a lovely pilaf

Toss into a frittata

Add a squeeze of lime and dip with tahini sauce

Curried Butternut Squash

1 butternut squash (about 1 pound)

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder

Dash of sea salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Cut the bottom and top off the squash.  Halve, peel, and seed squash and cut into 1/2-inch pieces.  In a baking pan mix the squash with the olive oil, curry powder, salt and pepper.  Bake squash until roasted and a bit crisp, about 1 hour.  Remove from the oven and enjoy!

Some other possible flavor combinations include:

Cardamom, ginger and nutmeg

Thyme and rosemary

Cinnamon and cloves

Sage and Parmesan cheese