Maggie Shi
Maggie Shi is a deputy editor at RealSimple.com, where she covers food, money, and work & life. She's never met a vegetable she didn't like and is obsessed with anything edible, which currently includes breakfast tacos, boiled peanuts, and hot lobster rolls (extra meat, lots of butter, and a toasty bun, please).



Previous roles include stints at Epicurious, the Food Network, Martha Stewart, and (oddly) MTV. She lives in New York City but fantasizes about a house on the Maine coast and hopes to fulfill her dream of going clamming someday.

Recent Posts By Maggie Shi

Gluten-Free Recipes for Your Favorite Cookies

March 29, 2011 | By | Comments (0)

It seems like everyone is trying to go gluten-free these days.  More and more people are diagnosed with celiac disease, have a gluten sensitivity, or just claim to feel better when they cut gluten out of their diets. Here’s the latest cookbook to address the gluten-free craze: Luane Kohnke’s Gluten-Free Cookies, which features 50 recipes for everything from sugar cookies to lemon squares to biscotti. Using ingredients like rice flour, potato starch, and tapioca flour, she offers tasty alternatives for favorite baked goods that would otherwise be off-limits.  

Gluten-free-cookies-book 

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How I Overcame My Fear of Failure With Chocolate Chip Cookies

March 22, 2011 | By | Comments (0)

When it comes to cooking—and especially baking—I’ve always been more of a stick-to-a-recipe kind of gal. In the past few years, however, as I’ve gotten more confident with my cooking, I’m willing and able to improvise and experiment—subbing in ingredients, adding different spices, making tweaks here and there. But with baking, I’ve almost always stuck strictly to the recipe, as I’ve been taught: Baking is an exact science, and once you start messing around with proportions or substitutions, you risk ruining the whole thing.

Chocolate-chip-cookies 

Well, I recently took a recipe testing class here in New York that taught me it’s ok to improvise when you’re baking, even if—the horror!—your experiment might fail.

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Behind the Scenes at Our Cake Video Shoot

March 15, 2011 | By | Comments (0)

We recently spent a day in the studio filming several how-to videos for the website. The subject? Cakes! How to assemble a cake, how to write “happy birthday” on a cake, and some really easy and fun ways to dress up a plain frosted cake. The kitchen was full of cakes, cupcakes, and big tubs of frosting…it smelled fantastic and tasted even better (when we finally got to sample all the treats at the end of the shoot).

 

Dawn-frosting

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Do You Have a Favorite Healthy Sweet Potato Recipe?

March 8, 2011 | By | Comments (0)

I love sweet potatoes, but I usually only eat them around Thanksgiving. Which is a shame, because they’re incredibly delicious and nutritious (packed with vitamins A, E, and B6, along with lots of potassium, iron, and fiber) and are available year-round. So I’m really excited to be one of the judges in this year’s Sweet n’ Healthy Blogger Recipe Contest. The star ingredient? Sweet potatoes, of course!

 

Sweet-potato 

Best of all, if you’re a blogger with an amazing and healthy original sweet potato recipe, you can enter the contest yourself for a chance to win $2,000.

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A Vegetarian Chili (With Chocolate?) for Dinner

March 1, 2011 | By | Comments (0)

Since I’m all about meatless meals and simmering big pots of warm, comforting stews on my stove these days, naturally I made another vegetarian chili recipe recently. This one was very rich and hearty, thanks to two kinds of beans (kidney and chickpeas) and the “secret” ingredient—chocolate.

 

Vegetarian-chili-chocolate 
 

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Half Broke Horses, Chapters 7 Through 9

February 23, 2011 | By | Comments (0)

Hi Bookies, we’re at the end and now I want to go back and re-read The Glass Castle to keep the story going. I’m constantly amazed by Lily’s resourcefulness. Is there nothing she can’t accomplish? Catching a wild horse, getting free gas on the way to and from Tucson, earning her college degree in two years, flying planes… It was […]

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Now You Can Eat Your (Angry Birds) Cake and Play It, Too

February 22, 2011 | By | Comments (0)

The game Angry Birds—with those infuriating green pigs and squawking birds—is simultaneously frustrating, fun, challenging, ridiculous, and utterly addictive. An extremely crafty and devoted father created an interactive Angry Birds cake—complete with working catapult—for one very lucky six-year-old boy. Watch the video; it’s adorable.

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A Delicious Meatless Chili Recipe

February 17, 2011 | By | Comments (0)

In an effort to be healthier this year, I’ve been cooking and eating a lot more meatless meals. A recent favorite was our White Bean Chili With Jalapeño Bulgur. Like pretty much all of our recipes, this one was simple to make. The cumin and chili powder gave the chili some great spice (I doubled the cumin because I love it so much), and with all the healthy beans and rich tomatoes, I didn’t miss the meat at all.

Bean-chili-final

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Half Broke Horses, Chapters 4 Through 6

February 16, 2011 | By | Comments (0)

Thanks for all your comments, Bookies—I’m glad to hear that all of you are enjoying the book as much as I am. Reader Brooke brought up an interesting topic I didn’t mention in my previous post—Lily’s mother. She seems to be the complete opposite of Lily and clearly thinks that a woman’s goal in life is to be married off […]

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Calorie Counts on Menus—Friend or Foe?

February 15, 2011 | By | Comments (0)

A recent study found that children and teens pretty much ignore calorie counts posted on fast-food menus (which is required in New York City). While the kids noticed the calories posted, they ordered whatever they wanted regardless. No big surprise there—how many kids do you know are going to order the salad instead of the cheeseburger because it’s 200 fewer calories?

But what about you? Do you notice when calorie counts are posted, and does it affect what you order?

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