Trip to Tuscany

Let's all take a deep breath, forget about the stresses of life and take a quick trip to Italy, where olive trees abound and rustic food is king.

Also, let's go to Italy because they probably invented combining kale and Parmesan cheese!

In Italian cooking, it's not always bing bang boom to get the complex flavors you want. Sometimes that picture you have of Nonna standing over the stove all day to make something incredibly delicious is a picture of what it takes to make some great flavors.

Magic Beans

Before my mom, in a moment of genius, came up with the recipe for Mom's White Bean Hummus,  I didn't even care about white beans.

You could say that they weren't even on my bean radar. I knew and loved black beans, refried beans, garbanzo beans even, but had not discovered the white bean.

And now, they're one of my main pantry staples.

They create the tastiest, fastest hummus, they are perfect on a tuna or spinach salad and they make any soup comforting in a short amount of time.

They're magic beans!