The Best of BGSK

With the holidays near–er, here–holiday party season is in full swing. We’re sure you’ve already labored over festive meals and decadent desserts to serve to your loved ones when entertaining at home. If you’re still hosting, for New Year’s Eve, perhaps, you deserve to take a break. Or at least appear to in front of your guests.

These awesome appetizers require almost no moment-of work or attention. Some need to be pulled out of the oven or gently reheated, but other than that, they’re purely make-ahead. For the most part, they’re easy too, requiring no more than a few…

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Christmas Cookies! With just a few short weeks to go, it’s time to start baking…or at least time to start thinking about baking.

Just the mention of cookies smiles to our faces. Between holiday parties and cookie swaps, we’ll be eating our fill. The question is, what to bake? There is the classic: a sugar cookie, artfully decorated. There’s the historical: a mandelbread recipe, passed down from Cara’s grandma. And there’s the seasonal: a spiced snickerdoodle, or a super-gingery gingersnap.

The best Christmas cookies look pretty and taste great, and they also keep well. That last quality means they…

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Our first-ever BGSK gift guide highlights eight days of presents we know you want to give and receive. To cut through the cluttered shelves of kitchen-oriented goodies, we’re spending eight days showing you the best of the best of the kitchen goodies to wrap up for or unwrap on Hanukkah and Christmas.

Today is Day #6–The 7 Best Giftable Food Activities.

There are food gifts like boxes of chocolate bark that can fit inside a stocking, and then there are those that are simply explained in a card. Who says the best presents have to be material things? For…

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Our first-ever BGSK gift guide highlights eight days of presents we know you want to give and receive. To cut through the cluttered shelves of kitchen-oriented goodies, we’re spending eight days showing you the best of the best of the kitchen goodies to wrap up for or unwrap on Hanukkah and Christmas.

Today is Day #3–all about foodie stuff you can wear.

Now that we’ve been food blogging for three years and change, we’ve come to have almost as many frilly aprons hanging in our closet as we do party dresses. And who are we to complain? You really…

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It would be impossible for our bodies to keep up with our minds when it comes to ingesting food. As hungry kids by nature and profession, we find that food occupies a permanent track in our brains. Whether we’re brainstorming new ways to use pumpkin, daydreaming about crazy combinations for never-been-seen-before pasta dishes, or wondering what new guides our readers would find useful, we’re constantly thinking about food. Still, three meals a day tends to be enough for our stomachs, and the foods we end up consuming in real life are often closer to

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Football season is officially underway, but, really, what’s a football game without a tailgate party? Whether you’ll be serving friends in your apartment, out of the trunk of your Jeep in the stadium parking lot, or out of a rented UHaul, check out the list below for go-to snack, wings, sandwich, and booze recipes that are easy to make, transport well, and will definitely score touchdowns with your friends.

**The 7 Best Tailgate Eats & Drinks**

1. Jonestown Punch
Buy a $10 disposable punch bowl and make this Jim Beam-based punch on site. The actual…

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The high holidays are here, and there’s no better time, whether you’re 25 or 55, to embrace the art of Jewish motherhood in the kitchen. For Rosh Hashanah, the menu features apples and honey to celebrate a fruitful New Year. On Yom Kippur, we usually emerge from our hunger black-out mid bagel, and remember little else. But no matter what the holiday, or how pushy a Jewish mother you grew up with, the traditions around the kitchen table  remain remarkably consistent: surrounded by family, we eat lots and lots of kugel.

Over the years, we’ve pooled some of our…

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It’s back-to-school season, and whatever that means in your life right now, it probably signals a few fewer hours devoted to yourself, to leisure, to biking and swimming, to just plain messing around–in the kitchen and outside it. That means a bit less time some nights to prepare dinner. But it doesn’t mean not eating well! Many of our favorite meals can be thrown together in less than half an hour. Keep your pantry stocked and your cutting board handy, and you won’t have to order takeout–unless you’re really craving it.

Many of our pastas can be…

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We love zucchini’s mild flavor, melt-in-your mouth texture, and amazing versatility. But by summer’s end, we all get a little weary of it, and the thought of throwing one more zucchini plank on the grill becomes something exciting no longer. Still, we gotta appreciate August’s bounty, even when it’s a little too bountiful. Look no further for tasty and creative ways to use up the rest of your summer squash yield.

1. Zucchini Scallion Cakes. Applying the grater is a transformative experience for a couple zucchini and scallions, on their way to becoming these latke-like bites.

2.…

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Ditch those free weights, and grab a cast iron skillet instead!

When we fear we might have gained a couple pounds—whether or not it’s bikini season, some of us get a little bit less worried about what toppings we’re going to put on our pasta, and more concerned with how we’ll look in our bikini afterwards. The good news is, when it’s warm outside, we begin to crave the foods that are fresher, healthier, and better for our beach bods. If you don’t have time to round out that kind of healthy lifestyle with a trip to…

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