This hot spinach artichoke dip is pure comfort food. Sign me up. This dip recipe comes together in under 20 minutes with basic ingredients: spinach, artichoke, cream cheese, sour cream, plus green onions and poblano pepper or bell pepper.

We’ll cook the green onions until they’re a little golden and frazzled around the edges, which is an easy way to yield tons of flavor. I’m obsessed with using lightly spicy, tender poblanos in this recipe (a great twist on standard spinach artichoke dip) but you can use a red bell pepper for a mild dip (also delicious!).

The end result is not the most beautiful dip in the world, but it’s definitely amongst the most tasty. It’s creamy and indulgent, yet tastes fresh and full of flavor. This dip is fully loaded with veggies and greens, so it’s actually more redeeming than you might think.

I hope you’ll whip together this spinach artichoke dip on the holidays, or for movie nights, or just any time you get a hankering for it. I’m daydreaming about serving this dip at parties next year!

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Make this Southwestern corn chowder for a cozy dinner at home! This vegetarian corn chowder recipe is fresh, wholesome and delicious. It’s perfect for cool late summer or fall evenings when fresh corn is at its peak. Or, you can make it any time with frozen corn.

I wanted the corn flavor to shine and balanced its sweetness with some Southwestern spice. You’ll find bell pepper, poblano and chili powder in this atypical chowder. I promise you will not miss the bacon.

I purposefully avoided using the heavy cream that you’ll find in most chowder recipes. Heavy cream has a tendency to dull flavors and also makes me feel weighed down. Instead, I blended a bit of butter into the soup (one of my favorite soup tricks) and stirred in some crème fraîche or sour cream at the end. These dairy ingredients offer some creaminess, of course, plus some tanginess that you won’t get from plain cream.

You can easily make this soup dairy free or vegan, if desired. You’ll love the end results either way!

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Sufferin’ succotash! I promise, that’s my last Loony Tunes reference. This vegetarian succotash recipe is fresh, vibrant and bacon-free. It features pan-seared corn, plump lima beans and fresh peppers.

Make this recipe now with fresh early fall produce, or bookmark it for your Thanksgiving table. You can easily use thawed frozen corn if fresh sweet corn is hard to come by.

As you’ll read below, succotash has Native American roots and many variations. Here in Kansas City, succotash is the namesake dish at a local restaurant called Succotash.

This recipe is my own interpretation of this uniquely American dish. I seared the corn in a skillet to develop more complex flavor. I added a variety of peppers (poblano, bell pepper and optional jalapeño) for some spice to help balance the sweetness of the corn. I’ve written the recipe to give you as much control as possible over the spice level, since individual preferences and corn’s sweetness can vary so much.

I omitted tomatoes because they made this dish more stew-like, and it’s more of a warm salad without. Creamy butter (no cream) and fresh herbs make this produce-driven, vegetarian side dish completely irresistible.

Watch How to Make Vegetarian Succotash

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These stuffed peppers are my kind of Mexican food: fresh and full of flavor, filling but not too heavy. They’re the first complete recipe I’ve cooked from Sara and Hugh Forte’s beautiful new cookbook, The Sprouted Kitchen, and I can easily see why they are one of Sara’s favorites to cook for company.

I feel pretty safe in assuming that most of you, as readers of this little whole foods blog, are familiar with Sprouted Kitchen. Sara’s recipes, which are photographed by her husband Hugh, are always vibrant, inspiring and feature fresh, seasonal produce at its finest.

Sara and her publisher, Ten Speed Press, kindly sent me an advance copy, which at first flip through sent my mind into a tizzy with its gorgeous photos and ingenious recipes. The cover of my copy already has a few splatters on it and I expect there will be many more to come. This one is a keeper, friends. I think you are going to want a copy of your own.

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I don’t know where to begin with these enchiladas, so I will say this: holy smokes, they are good. Stuffed with scrambled eggs, sautéed portobello mushrooms and roasted red pepper, and smothered in a spicy, smoky homemade roasted poblano sauce with a hint of cinnamon—they’re better than good. These enchiladas are truly incredible.

Like huevos rancheros, egg enchiladas great any time of day: breakfast, brunch, lunch, or dinner. The enchiladas do require some forethought, time and effort, but they are worth it tenfold. I highly suggest making them for brunch, say, tomorrow!

These enchiladas were inspired by one of our stops during the Cleveland food tour last month. That Saturday, we ate breakfast in a warm, cozy café called Lucky’s. It’s nestled in Tremont, an eclectic old neighborhood in Cleveland that’s full of great restaurants and art galleries. I had heard Lucky’s had been on The Food Channel’s Diner’s, Drive-Ins and Dives, but that didn’t mean much because I don’t watch TV (I’ve never seen the show). I knew Lucky’s was going to be good when I saw their garden beside the building. It’s built behind the cute patio in raised beds that are handicap accessible for volunteers.

After sitting down and drooling over the menu, the owner, Heather, stopped by our table and shared a bit of her background and her philosophy with us. Part of her mission statement is to “offer our customers an alternative to the mass produced by committing our passion for the craft to creating good wholesome food.” Outrageously good, wholesome food is what we got.

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