Jen Karetnick

You're just 25 minutes away from an easy dinner.
Active Time:
5 mins
Total Time:
25 mins
Servings:
This 7-Can Soup, which begins with a can of vegetarian chili, couldn't be easier. Just pop open the tops of the cans, tip the insides into a large stock pot, and simmer until it's ready.
When ready to serve, add some rice, or stir in some cheese, top with sour cream or scallions, or crumble up some tortilla chips for additional texture. Feel free to substitute meat chili, or add some leftover ro...

The ‘Wild Huckleberry’ Is Redundant
By Jen Karetnick
If the only wild huckleberry you’ve heard of is the character from “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” then you likely haven’t been in northwest Montana in the summer-fall shoulder season. That’s when it’s all wild huckleberries, all the time.
Indeed, these little berries are huge business in Big Sky towns like Kalispell, Bozeman, Misso...

You might find yourself a little puzzled by the Alexander, a mid-Miami Beach oceanfront resort, which you perhaps last thought of as a dining destination when Shula’s Steak House opened in 1998. The sputnik light fixtures overhead are half-extinguished at the valet, which costs a retro five bucks. Inside, glittering chandeliers also recall its 1960s past, as does a sweeping staircase.
But patterned carpets and a clashing array of upholstered, mismatched furniture challenge any mid-century ele...

When coming up with this diverting little list of drinking holes, we wrestled with some questions: What makes an establishment a bar as opposed to a pub, a tavern, a speakeasy, or any other synonym? Are they allowed to serve food, or are they supposed to be a strictly peanuts-and-brewski kinds of places? Can they offer entertainment and be more like a lounge or a nightclub? And, if it’s also a restaurant, do minors in the establishment discount them?
Then there’s the definition of "continuous...

Key Points
Kitten-proofing your home is a proactive way of keeping your new furry friend and your house happy and safe.
Some places to kitten-proof include your kitchen, your bathrooms, your living room, your laundry room, your garage, and your garden.
To start, look for places where tiny kittens can get in big trouble with electrical cords, blind cords, drapes, and tablecloths. Put away breakable valuables and encourage your new family member to use a cat tree or scratching post instead of y...

So you watched The Menu, cackling at all the “breadless bread plate” and “broken emulsion” scenes. And then, since you had viewed one food-driven movie, your streaming service suggested that you also screen Love, Charlie: the Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter.
Both movies are, at their essence, about tasting-menu culture. But unlike The Menu, a satirical thriller about consumerism and pretentiousness in the hospitality industry, Love, Charlie is a documentary about how multiple James Bear...

The addition of sour cream and chives adds a tart touch to this classic side dish.
Mashed potatoes are a classic side dish for every kind of meal, from weeknight dinners to holiday feasts. The creamy, fluffy potatoes perfectly accompany roast beef, short ribs, and roast chicken, but mashed potatoes can also be a great base for pot roasts, soups, and more.
Mashed potatoes are fairly simple and straight-forward, but there are ways to make this old-fashioned side even easier. One such way: an In...

In his 1974 tome On Food, James Beard wrote, "To me, there are few things as magnificent as scrambled eggs, pure and simple, perfectly cooked and perfectly seasoned."
He's not alone. Many chefs, home cooks, and folks who appreciate food feel that an egg, cooked to personal specifications, is one of life's purest pleasures.
Lately, however, that pleasure is quickly becoming a luxury.
As they're known in the industry, shell eggs have been skyrocketing in cost. The USDA's National Shell Egg Inde...

Carmen Martínez Torrón via Getty Images
The news, when it was announced in late December, was both dire and definitive: Ronzoni had discontinued its signature pastina, product No. 155. Fans all over social media — many of them Gen Xers who were raised on the tiny pasta shape and fed it to Gen Z children, just like their postwar elders did for their families — were outraged.
Twitter lit ablaze as people mourned the star-shaped carb.
Today I found out that Ronzoni is discontinuing their pastina...

CreativeDesignArt via Getty Images
My welcome-to-Miami party was a hurricane party. In 1992, newly married, I moved to South Beach just in time to be clobbered by Hurricane Andrew. Back then, we didn’t have a lot of warning either. On Saturday, we spent the day at the beach, and on Sunday we were shipping out under mandatory evacuation orders. The Category 5 hurricane struck early Monday morning, on Aug. 24.
Since then, my family and I have been through many tropical systems, ranging from Kat...

Weekend Getaways
As more and more companies embrace remote workers, flexible hours and shorter workweeks, employee lifestyles are changing — as are ideas of what exactly a weekend might look like. As people maximize this hybrid living, second homes — weekend bases, as it were — become even more tempting prospects.
Read on to discover eight locales that make excellent second-home bases, where the local culture is enticing and the benefits of living there three days per week are yours for the t...

Don't make upset stomachs part of the menu this holiday season.
Cookbooks and recipes make it sound like roasting a Thanksgiving turkey is a fairly simple process. But if you’ve ever manned a Thanksgiving hotline, like my sister did for many years when she was the talent for Martha Stewart’s Sirius XM Morning Drive show, then you might get an inkling that a lot of home cooks are somewhat mystified by the process.
Some have never handled whole birds before. Others don’t realize that most Thank...

During a recent national broadcast about rising food costs and inflation, I was struck by the graphic: An empty shopping cart in front of a refrigerated display of expensive imported cheeses. I don’t think whether or not we can afford a regular supply of brie is what we’re really worried about right now.
Instead, I’d wager that most of us have noticed how our bills have tripled in the past months just from buying staples such as produce, eggs, poultry and meat. And we’re all searching for way...

Always be prepared.
After several years of pandemic separations, this Thanksgiving promises to be epic for get-togethers. So you might be thinking about preparing now.
But if you've ever cooked a Thanksgiving meal—and most of us have, of course—then you know how frustrating it can be to prepare ahead of time, given that supermarkets like to mostly showcase seasonal items.
But there are some elements you can decide on now and then buy products accordingly.
In fact, "I think that one of the mos...

Don's store these fruits and vegetables together, or else you'll end with a bowl or fridge full of spoiled produce. The culprit? Ethylene gas.
If you typically buy a bunch of fruit and vegetables and throw them all in a bowl on the countertop or one bin in the refrigerator, then it’s time to talk about your gas buildup. No, not that kind of gas—ethylene gas.
Ethylene gas is a naturally occurring plant hormone that causes various actions during a plant’s life cycle, such as seed germination an...