Winner of Your Best Picnic Recipe

Congratulations to Shannon, whose Roasted Potato Salad with Mustard-Walnut Vinaigrette won the contest for Your Best Picnic Recipe!

Describe an early food experience that has influenced the way you think about food and/or cooking.
My grandma introduced me to her take on Chinese food when I was young. Her beef and broccoli stir-fry, a dish most Chinese people would likely find offensively inauthentic, was exotic and exciting to my six-year-old tastebuds. Her influence encouraged me to pursue new eating and cooking adventures with gusto -- and, of course, a hearty appetite.

What's your least favorite kitchen task?
If it were up to me, knives would never become dull. As this is unfortunately not the case, my husband has taken it upon himself to become a master knife sharpener. Three cheers for kitchen teamwork!

 

Your favorite kitchen tool?
My OXO bench scraper is a constant kitchen companion, although I cook more than I bake. It's so useful for everything from cleaning a cutting board to transferring chopped vegetables to portioning bread dough. I'd be lost without it.

What is your idea of comfort food?
Things on bread. I promise I felt this way before the Fancy Toast Craze of 2014.

More: Make your own craze with these 8 savory breakfast toasts.

What is your greatest kitchen disaster?
After a dinner party, I dropped my largest glass Pyrex bowl on the wood floor and it broke into a million little pieces. Even after a thorough (and embarrassingly teary) cleanup, we were finding miniscule glass shards around the house for weeks. 

What's your favorite dish to pack on a picnic? We want to know!