I’ve been experimenting with naturally sweetened cream cheese frosting. After much trial and error, here’s my recipe! Instead of powdered sugar, I used Medjool dates.

The dates contribute lovely caramel-like flavor and color, which I’m sure you’ve noticed by now. They also add some fiber, which you don’t normally find in frosting recipes.

Even though this frosting doesn’t look or taste exactly like classic cream cheese frosting, this fruit-sweetened frosting is creamy and truly delicious. Plus, it’s very easy to whip up in your food processor!

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Would you look at that beauty? This easy tart recipe comes from my friend Ali’s new cookbook, Inspiralized & Beyond, and I think you should make it for Mother’s Day.

Her recipe is brilliant—the base is made simply with Medjool dates and pecans. It’s like a Larabar in crust form! After a 10-minute freeze, she spreads Greek yogurt and fresh fruit on top. I’m not a fancy baker, so if I can make this tart, I’m confident that you can, too.

Ali is known for her creative spiralized recipes (think zucchini noodles), and her newest book branches out by offering fun ways to “spiralize, chop, rice and mash” your vegetables into creative meals.

I’m excited to try out her apple French toast (made with apple slices instead of toast), sweet potato skin nachos, hearts of palm “ceviche,” Mediterranean zucchini pasta salad, portobello bulgogi bowls and more. The book isn’t vegetarian, but she devoted an entire chapter to vegetarian mains and I love that!

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What a weekend. On Friday, I zoomed six hours southwest to Woodward, Oklahoma, for my grandmother Virginia’s 85th birthday party. On Saturday, I zoomed six hours back to pick up Cookie before the boarder closed, on a different route that was supposed to save me, like, ten minutes. I ended up on a construction detour over red dirt roads and got pulled over for speeding by a policeman in a pick-up truck. (Look, Mom, no ticket!)

On Sunday, I hosted the first stop in Ali’s bachelorette party, which concluded with ten girls belting Alanis Morissette lyrics in a private karaoke room. And yesterday, we celebrated Jordan’s soon-to-be-here baby with a decidedly chill baby shower. Today, I’m resisting the urge to pour myself a third cup of coffee.

Surely I’m not the only person who over-indulged this weekend, right? Let’s reset with a simple, inexpensive, and addictive celery salad. I included chopped celery in two salads in my cookbook, but this is my first celery-centric salad. It’s a crisp, refreshing and totally underrated salad ingredient.

I found the recipe in a new cookbook called Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables by chef Joshua McFadden and Martha Holmberg. Kat Sacks from Epicurious sent the book to me so I could participate in this month’s edition of #EpiCookbookClub—each month, Epicurious is selecting a cookbook to cook from, and you can participate by tagging your food photos #EpicCookbookClub on Instagram and Facebook. I love it.

I’m quite smitten with Six Seasons. It’s a gorgeous seasonal cookbook that highlights a wide variety of produce and offers inventive recipes for each type. I’ve bookmarked a ton of recipes to try and picked this one to try first, since McFadden said it’s one of his favorite dishes.

I’m learning a lot from his produce introductions. For example, in the celery intro, I learned that celery is super-thirsty and needs a lot of attention from growers, which is why you don’t find it often at farmers’ markets. It gets tough and stringy when it’s not consistently and adequately watered. Have you seen heirloom celery varieties in purple or magenta yet? I’m keeping an eye out for them now.

Before I go, some updates on Love Real Food:

• Tessa made my Lemony Almond-Blueberry Cake
• Abby made my Maple Bourbon Candied Pecans
• Lindsey made my Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Sarah made my Fresh Greek Nachos with Herbed Tahini Sauce
• Heather made my Tahini Kale Caesar Salad (and her daughters Pia and Coco made my Banana Pecan Shakes ♥)
• Thank you so much for the kind reviews—Love Real Food has nearly 60 five-star reviews on Amazon!

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I met Amie Valpone in New York a few months ago, at the International Year of Pulses launch party. I was surrounded by people I didn’t know and feeling a little shy, and Amie bounded up and introduced herself, bubbling over with enthusiasm. I was so glad.

She kept referencing how sick she had been—a decade of chronic illnesses (lyme disease, hypothyroidism, leaky gut syndrome and more) slowed her down immensely. She is finally cured after seriously detoxifying her life, from the products in her home to the food she eats.

I had a hard time imagining this vivacious woman with glowing skin being sick and bedridden, but I could sense by the passionate tone in her voice that her illness and recovery were both very real. The motivation behind her website, The Healthy Apple, and her new book, Eating Clean, is to help others get better and feel better.

She sent me a copy of her book, which is full of solid information and practical advice for detoxifying our homes and diets. I like to think I run a pretty clean operation over here, but she has inspired me to do even better. I can’t wait to make her simple (and cheap) cleaning solution of orange-infused vinegar.

Her book offers over 200 simple and healthy recipes (that’s right, 200!). The chia seed pudding in the breakfast chapter caught my eye, and I enjoyed it so much I just had to share it. I’ve tried chia seed “pudding” before and just couldn’t get behind that oddly gelatinous texture. Amie’s version, however, is blended with cashews and dates for ultra creamy pudding. She added a swirl of chia gel to hers, but I think I like mine best all creamy. It’s up to you.

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If you’re craving a cold and creamy treat with redeeming qualities, this date “shake” recipe is for you! It features nutty tahini and caramel-like dates, two of the Middle East’s most beloved ingredients. Frozen bananas form a creamy, sweet base in place of vanilla ice cream.

The dates and bananas take off tahini’s savory edge, making it taste like dessert. The result is a decadent treat that’s closer to a milkshake than a banana smoothie in terms of sweetness and richness. It’s dairy-free and vegan.

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Last week, I snuck off to Atlanta for a magazine conference. And for once, I thought to bring back-up snacks for my travels. They provided sustenance in the mornings, when breakfast ten floors down seemed so far away, and kept me calm when our flight home took a sudden detour from Chicago to Indianapolis during dinnertime.

Eating well, and often, is so ingrained in my daily life that I forget how crucial it is until I leave my kitchen behind for a few days. I rarely mention it here, but I’m hypoglycemic. Skipped meals, simple carbs and junk food turn me into a shaky, miserable, mumbling mess… and if you ask my mother, a monster. I’m at my worst when I’m hungry, and my most cheerful best when I’m well-fed. That’s why this food blog’s motto came to be “celebrating whole foods”.

I tried my first Larabar earlier this year, so I won’t assume that you have experienced one yet. Larabars are “energy” bars made with real ingredients like dates, nuts and other dried fruit or add-ins like chocolate. Their ingredients list is remarkably short, and they are surprisingly delicious for packaged food. Somehow their sum is greater than their parts.

Being a curious person (see also: cheap), it didn’t take me long to try making them myself. I’m glad I did, because these little square snacks made all the difference for my mood during the trip.

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