Cozy at Home – FoodWatcher

5 Tips for Hosting the Comfiest Movie Night

We’ve teamed up with the audio innovators at Sonos to give your family movie nights a makeover. Their collection of smart soundbars—from the compact Ray to their top-selling Arc— allows you to customize your home theater experience, and make the movies…

Occasionally I’ll give my friends a peek at our family’s weekly calendar just to watch them recoil in horror. With three kids, each playing multiple sports, our schedule is best summed up with an exploding head emoji. By the time Friday evening rolls around—before a weekend filled with games and tournaments—we gather up every blanket in the house, create a cocoon stocked with snacks, and settle in for a relaxing family movie night.

60 Best Comfort Food Recipes for Cozy Meals

Comfort food will never waiver in its ability to taste divine, please a crowd, offer a great day-long cooking project, and generally deliver great leftovers, too. Cover thinly sliced potatoes in a cream sauce and turn them into a golden brown, bubbly side dish to serve alongside roast chicken, seared pork chops, or pan-seared steak. Roast veggies like butternut squash or sweet potatoes for an easy, family-friendly side. For the main course, there’s always pasta. Meaty lasagna, baked ziti, stuffed shells, and cheese ravioli do the trick.

Grab a Dutch oven, an Instant Pot, slow-cooker, or a basic sheet pan and make one or more of these classic comfort food recipes.

13 of the Most Bewitching Halloween Candles

As soon as the leaves start to change colors and coffee shops introduce seasonal spiced lattes to their menus, that means one terrifying thing—Halloween is around the corner. To get in the spirit of the season, these 13 bewitching Halloween candles wil…

The spookiest of all—Target’s Bleeding Skull Candle—is wicked cool. However, not all of these candles will send a shiver up your spine. Anthropologie, Voluspa, and Nest all sell uber-sophisticated scents that are ripe for burning all throughout fall. If the flame is suddenly extinguished, well you may just want to check for ghosts hiding in your closets.

We’re Calling It: This Is the Golden Age of Candles

I grew up in a house pretty much devoid of candles, unacquainted with their simple pleasures until I flew the nest. My mother is very scent-sensitive (seriously, the woman can catch a whiff of a Reese’s peanut butter cup from 15 feet away) and is an insurance adjuster who’s seen too many house fires start from unattended candles. So, I discovered the charm of a nighttime candle only in college, at which point they were banned in dorm rooms (understandably so), and were all the more precious since they were at constant risk of confiscation.

Fast forward to my adult life, and boy do I still love the evening ambience. I’ve got multiple candles in every room, set up with little jars of matches for whenever the mood strikes. I’m far from alone in this, as well, according to the explosion of candle content to be found on the internet in the past year. We’ve seen people of all ages reshaping, making, reviewing, and caring for their beloved candles like never before, and it’s really a pretty wholesome hobby to indulge.

11 Instant Pot Recipes Ready for the Super Bowl

Despite how strange the last year was, some things never change—and the Super Bowl is one constant. It may look a little different in 2021, but if you’re anything like me, you were mostly in it for the food anyways (and you don’t need a crowd to make a giant batch of mac and cheese). It’s also the perfect time to break out some of the cooking gadgets you were gifted over the holidays: Fill those air fryers with chicken wings, break in your Dutch ovens with a huge pot of chili, and of course, plug in the real star of Super Bowl Sunday when it comes to kitchen tools, the Instant Pot.

This game day, use your Instant Pot to cook everything from classic chili and wings to dessert(!). Whether you’re cooking for the whole house or throwing a party for one, here are 11 Super Bowl Instant Pot recipes that’ll take your taste buds to the end zone.

10 TV Shows & Movies to Watch 6 Feet Away From Your Roommate

Now more than ever, home is where many of us are seeking refuge and solace in light of the novel coronavirus. This is a tough time, but we’re here for you—whether it’s a new pantry recipe or a useful tip for your kitchen, here are some ideas to make th…

It feels very strange to be stuck in place—a house, an apartment—while so much is changing out in the world. And for those of you who have already begun to feel murderous toward your roommates (or significant others, siblings, parents, cousins—all of which by now have become, in all but name, your roommates), it's important to cultivate what Seamus Heaney called "moments of lift, of joy." Whatever you’re going through right now, here are ten shows and movies, all available on streaming services, to distract and delight.

Being Quarantined With My Kids Isn’t What I Expected

I’m a mom of four. There are six of us living in our house. One of us is a 15 year-old-girl who tested 98 percent extroverted on the Meyers-Briggs, and one of us is an 8-year-old boy who runs instead of walking, and yells out everything he says.

10 Books to Warm the Soul (or Just Distract It)

If you’re like me, you’re finding that this strange time wavers between being mildly unsettling and completely overwhelming, hour to hour, day to day. It can be all-consuming, even if you’re one of the lucky ones that can continue to work from home.

Is a Weighted Blanket the Sleep Solution You’ve Been Waiting For?

I’m no stranger to sleep woes, as I’ve already documented in detail. I’ve tried pretty much everything there is to try when it comes to falling asleep. So when weighted blankets rose in popularity, the idea became more and more appealing. I wasn't without doubts, though: “Wouldn’t that make me feel suffocated?” and “Will my weak, weak arms be able to pull that over my body?” chief among them.

That was then.

2 Slow-Cooker Meals Sure to Make You Feel Downright Cozy

Oftentimes, cozy recipes require hours of forethought, prep, and stirring (really, why is there always so much stirring?). But submissions to our latest recipe contest proved that to not always be the case.

Of all the recipes we tasted, these two cons…

Of all the recipes we tasted, these two consistently delivered maximal coziness (with minimal stirring). Both homey, quintessential dishes updated for the modern cook, neither recipe loses out on flavor, complexity, nor texture, in spite of the nontraditional approach. Both not only tolerate the low-and-slow, hands-off method, but are made all the better for it.