Save or Splurge: The Kitchen

July 19, 2015 | By Sarah AuthorMy First Apartment

One of the best parts (or worst, depending on your skillset) of moving into your own apartment is having free reign over your kitchen, meal plan, and cooking schedule. For those that love to cook, this freedom is thrilling! For those that don’t, it can be a bit daunting. Here’s a our list on what…

Reader Tips: Turn Your Apartment Into A Home

September 12, 2012 | By Alissa AuthorMy First Apartment

A couple of weeks ago, we ran a post calling for reader tips for how to make your first apartment feel like a home. We got some GEM advice. To make sure you saw all the great tips, we wanted to compile them into a fresh post – highlighting some of the key themes we saw:…

Sam’s Favorite Cookbooks and Websites for a Novice Cook

February 23, 2012 | By Sam AuthorMy First Apartment

For an aspiring cook there are hundred of resources, both in print and on the internet, to learn new cooking techniques, experiment with new recipes, and experience new ingredients. When I look for inspiration, I prefer books and websites that focus more on techniques, ingredients, flavor combinations, and cuisines of different cultures;…

Surprise Your Sweetie with a Valentine’s Day Dinner to Remember.

February 10, 2012 | By Sam AuthorMy First Apartment

Surprise your sweetie on Valentine’s Day with a delicious home-cooked dinner. The menu: Red Wine-braised Osso Bucco with Citrus Gremolata, Parmesan Polenta and Arugula Salad. And for the dessert, the delicious chocolates your honey brings you, with another glass of wine or a good cup of coffee. (Note: the Osso Bucco is not difficult to…

Easy First Apartment Last-Minute Thanksgiving Dinner Party

November 23, 2010 | By MFA Editors AuthorMy First Apartment

First Thanksgiving away from home and the budget does not allow you to go “over the river and through the woods” to grandma’s house. Instead of getting depressed and crying into your sushi dinner after a lonely movie, throw your own Thanksgiving dinner party and hardly dip into your personal finances. The menu planning is…

How to Plan a Week of Healthy Meals for $60

September 29, 2010 | By MFA Editors AuthorMy First Apartment

Our guest blogger Elyse is an NYU student who just recently managed to free herself from the college dormitory system. Me and My Grocery List The one thing I never understood in college was how quickly people abandoned their meal plans. Why would a person choose to cook meals, wash dishes and, the worst part of…

Keep Your No-Takeout New Year’s Resolution!

January 6, 2010 | By Alissa AuthorMy First Apartment

With the end of the holiday season comes the end of free, well-prepared food. No more well-balanced, homemade meals or three-course dinners that you pretty much just have to show up to. Nope, we’ll just have to make it be our New Year’s resolution to treat ourselves better and eat more healthily. We’ll actually have…

What did you think I would post about next?

August 30, 2006 | By Kate AuthorMy First Apartment

Close on eggs’ heels in the race of easy, delicious things to cook: chicken soup. No, not the Campbell’s kind. Dear reader, you’re a grown-up now, and your grown-up taste buds deserve better. Remember that cooking, like all of life’s arts, requires lots of practice, and lots of trial and error. Start basic, expect to…

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

August 28, 2006 | By Kate AuthorMy First Apartment

When you’re learning to cook, it’s definitely the egg. Eggs are an easy, cheap, delicious, and nutritious thing to cook when you’re first starting out. You can scramble, boil, whip, poach, or even slurp them raw. Although that, technically, doesn’t count as cooking. When I was a kid, scrambled eggs were one of my top…