About Ali
Hey! I’m Ali, and I am so happy that you found your way here to Gimme Some Oven.
I created this little corner of the internet to celebrate life around the table and the good food that bring us all together. Here in our house, we gravitate towards recipes that are quick, easy, seasonal, (mostly) healthy, and big on flavor. So whether that’s whipping up a quick stir-fry or batch of cozy wild rice soup in the wintertime, blending up some refreshing gazpacho with sangria in the summertime, making our millionth batch of tacos and margs on Tuesdays, or baking up a warm batch of cinnamon rolls and eggs benny for sunny weekend brunches — my heart is never more happy than when my table is filled with good food and good people gathered ’round.
If that sounds like your style too, you’ve got a kindred spirit right here. ♡
A bit about me.
When I began this blog back in 2009, I was working as a full-time musician by day and cooking up a storm by night. Now, I have the privilege of doing all of the recipe-developing and writing for this site as my full-time job. And more than a decade into blogging, I can honestly say that I still absolutely love it. Seeing the recipes that I create here in my tiny kitchen show up on your tables around the world makes my heart deeply so happy, and I work hard to be sure that this site continues to be a trustworthy resource for you to turn to.
Beyond the blog, I’m a born-and-raised Kansas girl who’s currently living the expat life for awhile in Barcelona, Spain. We try to make the most of those crazy-cheap RyanAir tickets and travel on the weekends around Europe as much as possible. But when we’re home, you can find us soaking up sunny terraces with friends, taking the pups for long walks along the shore, enjoying endless tapas and glasses of vermut, and just enjoying our cozy little apartment here in the city center.
To follow more along with life and reflections behind-the scenes, feel free to follow my personal Instagram account. And for anyone interested, I also share there about our infertility and IVF journey too.
A bit about my food philosophy.
So what kinds of recipes will you see here on Gimme Some Oven?
Short answer: a little bit of everything.
The food that I share on the blog is the food that we eat here in our home. And as an omnivore married to a vegetarian, the majority of the meals in our house are now plant-based. (So some of you long-time readers may notice that meat dishes have become less common on here.) One of the things I also love about living in Barcelona is that the markets here are strictly seasonal — as in, you couldn’t find fresh watermelon or tomatillos here in December if you tried — which has been great extra motivation to cook with seasonal produce as much as possible.
The majority of our meals during the weekdays fall in the 30-minutes-or-less category. But I also love cozying up with a hot cup of coffee or a glass of wine on the weekends and diving into recipes that require a bit more time, like our favorite Swedish cinnamon buns or Spanish paellas or DIY maki rolls for “Sushi Sundays.” You may notice that we also have a major weakness for Mexican food, noodles of all kinds, soups and various kinds of cookies around here. And while most of my recipes are on the healthier side, I definitely also enjoy indulging in some indulgent sweets and comfort foods on occasion.
So as always, please always feel free to take whatever recipes you love on here and leave the rest. And if you ever have specific recipe requests, don’t hesitate to let me know because I love to cook what you’re craving!
Thank you.
More than anything, I just want to say thank you so much for being here, and I hope that this site can play some small part in making your days a little brighter and tastier. Cheers, everyone. ♡
Love,
Ali
I have always loved your blog Ali and now am finally starting one of my own. Feeling late to the blog party – so love your generous spirit to fellow bloggers and LOVE your recipes!
What are the calories per serving size and what is a serving size ?
I’ve tried several times to view the red enchilada sauce recipe but have somehow been unable to find the exact measurements of the ingredients. Even the video doesn’t specify. Please advise as to where I can find that info. Thanks!
Hi, I found your page totally by accident while looking for a summery orzo salad recipe. We are actually going to be in Barcelona at the end of September. Since you live there I was just wondering if you have any suggestions for a restaurant that we should not miss, and that won’t break the bank. Thanks!
Have loved all the recipes you shared so far. Keep it up!
Fell In love with your red sauce for my chicken enchiladas. Also, because you have two dogs. I have seven rescues. So you had me with the dogs. I made extra red sauce and was curious as to whether I could just freeze it instead of making the enchiladas ahead of time. Does it freeze well and what’s the best type of container to freeze it in. Thanks so much and carry-on you’re doing a great job.
Ali, I want to thank you for dozens of successful dinners for my picky, fine dining-loving husband! Every time I try a new “Pinterest recipe” that results in a rave review, it is ALWAYS from your blog. And trust me, he would not praise a meal he didn’t absolutely love. We are an active duty military family currently living in Kansas city, I am a work at home mom, and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for making my other jobs as “mommy” and “wife” easier. No more Pinterest for me… just Gimme Some Oven! Thank you!!!
Love Spain! My beautiful wife and I visited two years ago and are planning a new longer trip in 2021.
My wife makes an incredible Cambodian curry. It hits all five points of flavor. I wonder if you would be interested in it. One or two warnings. For one it is addictive. Two, there are twenty ingredients. Fresh Thai basil and fresh lemongrass is essential. Shrimp paste and quality fish sauce is also necessary. If you have access to these ingredients you will make this again and again.
My wife and I love to cook, bake and bbq. Our family dinners with our adult children and spouses are legendary for diversity of foods. My daughter has been taking a night now too. Only stipulation is no processed foods. All ingredients must be fresh and preferably in season.
NO LIVER OR OTHER ORGANS. But tripe, sweetbreads and intestines are ok. We live in a coastal community in Connecticut so seafood is a go to at most meals whether as part or main dishes.
My son and your husband could be brothers, not quite twins but close.
Michael
Please, Please, Ali, get Michael to share his Cambodian Curry recipe! But also, today I found your “gimmesomeoven” site searching for a homemade enchilada sauce. So glad to break free of cluttered-hard-to-use sites; I am loving your layout, readability, and fan-commentary. I too am from KC (and my name is also Ali and my first husband was a chef). And I look forward to finding many more gems on your site. Thank you for embarking on your adventures & blog!!
Hi Ali, and greetings from Kansas City (actually Lee’s Summit) where it’s unusually rainy and cool…perfect cooking weather! Thank you for your awesome blog and recipes. I have never enjoyed cooking, until recently my husband signed us up for a meal kit service. We quickly realized that it wasn’t so hard and we have started to dip our toes in the water!! (And yes, we cancelled the meal kit service.) I’m excited to make this pasta salad for my daughter’s wedding reception picnic! Thanks again!!
I tried your chicken recipe and it was superb. My granddaughter lives with me and I have to make her lunch daily as she hates the cafeteria food. And chicken is her favorite but the chicken I was cooking was so dry and tough, but she still ate it. So I decided Would try to find out what I was doing wrong. Well, now I know. I also found your recipes for steak and pork chops and can’t wait to try them. I’m a 78 year old grandma and my granddaughter is almost 14 and she likes good food and likes to make food so I want it to be as delicious as possible .
Spain, Just FAB! living your dream! I couldn’t find the “receipe” for your Ench. Casserole either.
Ali,
Love your blog. I am planning to make your awesome sounding ROASTED CAULIFLOWER ENCHILADAS and the Lemony Lentil Soup this weekend for friends, can’t wait to try it! One question on the enchiladas. Did you process or chop the roasted cauliflower or use it chunky as it came of the oven? Your recipe doesn’t say but running it through the food processor, to me anyway, would make sense
Hi Ali! I’m glad I found you amidst all the other cooking/lifestyle blogs out there. Your ‘philosophy’ is refreshing and real. I’m a fan! I do have a quick question: I’m making a double batch of your “Chicken Enchilada Casserole” for a family birthday celebration. I need to make it on Thursday for Saturday night. Is that doable? Would I put it together then pop in oven close to dinner time? My concern is that after 2 days the corn tortillas would get soggy.
Thanks for any tips and suggestions. I’m going to make the enchilada sauce and your recipe for Mexican Caesar Salad w Yogurt Dressing (using lime juice of course!).
Joanie
Great Job on all. Fantastic Baked Chicken recipe!
Move over Martha Stewart.
I wonder what instrument you play ?
Love! Love! Love your site! Every recipe I’ve made has been easy to follow, easy to make, nutritious and delicious! I so appreciate the variety of recipes you post. Thanks for helping make dinnertime fun!
-Lori
Hey Ali! I LOVE you blog; you have the best recipes. One request: can you do more instant pot recipes and/or add instructions to adapt your stovetop/slow cooker recipes for instant pot? I am obsessed with my new IP and keep wanting to use your recipes with it, but there aren’t a ton made for or applicable to IP. Please help!
Thanks for all you do!
Hi Ali,
I came across your recipes on Pinterest. I have had several pinned for awhile. Just made your Broccoli cheese soup last night, and have only enough leftover for my lunch (Yea!). I have a vegetarian daughter so she loves it when I make something she can enjoy, which is often. Finally took the time to read your blog this morning. Looking forward to searching it some more. Hope you will keep it up. Thanks (and I’m a Kansas City girl too)
Hi! I am totally new but just found your recipe on crispy carnitas in the instant pot as well as tamales and homemade enchilada sauce (which is the bomb, by the way). I have had friends ask me to make a great cilantro soup and I am struggling with finding the right recipe. Any insight you have living in the Iberian peninsula would be fantastic! Thanks so much from South Carolina!
I love your style and vsriety of recipes. I am half Greek. I would be glad to share some of my cheater recipes with you. I like to take complicated recipes and make them easier to make. Modern appliances and canned or frozen Iingrediences can make it fun to cheat. I have also found no difference when dumping e everything in a mixer to prepare many cookies and cakes and sauces. Another good cheater tip. Anyway you keep your good recipes coming. I love the foods of many cultures. Glad to have found you.
Hi Ali your French Toast muffins look amazing. Can they be made the day before and heated up in the microwave before serving.
Ali, I tried wants to send you a suggestion about all of your travels have been spent many days in Barcelona while traveling around the world we made two trips up to Andorra which may not sound like the most exciting place in the world but it was so interesting and so much fun the religious center up there will knock your socks off with the history behind it we happen to go up on good Friday and it was sleeting in just dreadful but if you recall there’s always the story of bad weather on good Friday be sure to go to Andorra it’s also a great shopping place people from France an all over come up there because it’s Textfree haven that’s supposed to say tax TAX
Love your style of cooking. Easy fresh fun. So glad you are in Spain so you can the European touch to so many dishes.keep up the good work. Oh I can actually find all of you ingredients in my local store
I love the variety of your recipes and have used quite a few. Always love them, the variety and spices. I thought I had used one which I can’t find though. My family is asking for it again. It was made with chicken, coconut milk and was the best. My son thought it was brazilian chicken
I love your recipes When your gumbo post mentioned the HenHouse, knew you are a KC girl – me too tho currently in Chicago. Nothing like KC bbq, Stroud’s, Princess Garden (if it’s still there?) -love it all. Makes me want to go home! There is great food here too, but it just isn’t home.
Hello Ali,
I came across your blog when I did a Google search for molasses cookies. I enjoy reading your blog. Thank you for sharing your recipes including well detailed tips & why they’re a good idea. :) I wish you, your husband, & dogs a Happy 2019 & beyond! :)
Hi Ali. I was looking online for a smoothie recipe to make in my newly unwrapped Christmas present, and I found you. Congrats on your move to Spain – how exciting is THAT! Enjoyed the last 30 minutes reading about you, and will make sure to bookmark GimmeSomeOven!
Ali! My wife googled your Autumn Wild Rice Soup recipe yesterday, and I, the hubbie, cooked it last night, first attempt, for us and our son and his wife, and all I can say is….GIMME SOME OVEN! Just discovered your blog, and love the holding it down timewise to @ 30 minutes recipes. I didn’t feel overwhelmed by ingredients either, peeling, dicing was minimal, and I doubled the baby bellas because I love mushrooms. The soup was a HIT and I told all my foodie family about your blog. I’m vegetarian as well (like your man) and have had to compromise this last year due to change of jobs. But with amazing soup recipes like yours, I think I found the path back to hearty eating. p.s. That was my first successful roux, EVER.
Thanks and God Bless You! -Stu, Macon, Georgia
Omg, I googled “butternut squash “ and you appeared. Well not you but your blog. I instantly was interested. Not with just the pictures and recipes but you’re personality! So genuine and cute! And, while your love story is romantic, you had me at “our two pups”!
I’m not married and have no children, but I love to cook and am raising two sibling brother boxer pups. They are double trouble but double love as well!
I can’t wait to try your recipes! So many recipes and I’m so excited with your variety! So happy to meet you Ali! Oh, btw, I’m Cecilia and my boys are Matteo and Tito.
I grew up in a large family where everything good happened around the dinner table. My mother was a war bride and emigrated from England to the US in 1945. She knew nothing about cooking and my father insisted she learn from his mother. Well she did and she became a great cook, not gourmet at all but delicious down home food (think meatloaf, chicken and dumplings, pork roast with all the trimmings, shepherds pie, beef stew, pot roast with vegetables and potatoes). I learned from her and kept up this tradition and now both of my grown children also love to cook. If fact, I told my son ‘if you like good food you had better learn to cook’ because so many young women don’t cook anymore. Now he and his wife cook together! I hope to learn new recipes from your blog and plan to try your Cajun Alfredo dish and also the Pad Thai as my husband and I are huge fans of Thai food. I will also share this Pad Thai recipe with my son-in-law who is GF as he and my daughter also love to cook and they love Thai food!!!
Hi Ali great recipes, all look yummy. I am in process of slow cooking your wild rice country soup. It is looking yum but I am a bit concerned. Can I freeze the soup once the roux or coconut milk is added as it is a batch too big for my family to eat in 4 days so would l like to save some. If you could answer this today it would be so appreciated as don’t want to spoil it. Thank You
LAURA
I was so excited to see this Gimme Some Oven recipe on Pinterest today because I met your mom and dad on a Viking cruise two summers ago! They were so much fun on the cruise! I’m anxious to try this crockpot Chex Mix!!
Ali!
You are awesome- based on what I’ve read and eaten. Im in the process of making your scallop potato recipe- having friends over for an afternoon of wine and video watching. While I was following the recipe- I recognized the font/layout style and realized I’ve made your chicken enchilada recipe (and mole) which was a huge hit! Just read your crab enchilad recipe, can’t wait to try it. Interestingly our friend Brendan who very much enjoyed the chicken enchiladas lives in Barcelona too. Thank you so much for the lovely recipes wishing you and your husband a beautiful primavera. Saludos de San Francisco, CA.
Love your recipes
Hi Ali! I just made (again!) your delicious to die for carrot cake for my hubs birthday. It’s his favorite and every year he askes for it ;) I was just checking your new recipes and saw the tahini dressing …it’s next on my to prepare list. BUT one thing caught my eye…the photo of the tahini jar and it’s label. So I’m glad you are here in Barna enjoying this great place, people and foods…. and to let you know you have a follower in town. Keep up the great job!
Hi Ali:
Just wanted to let you know I was craving chicken enchiladas in red sauce. I found your recipe and your red sauce is exactly what I was looking for. Excellent recipe and my wife gave me a “10” on this one. Great job! You should be very proud of this one – the sauce is what makes the dish.
I love the recipe for the flourless chocolate chip cookies but it has almond flour
and my granddaughter is allergic to ALL nuts and deadly to PEANUTS. What’
can I use instead of the almond flour or which flour would you substitute?
Thank you Shirl Quinn
Dear Ali,
Thanks for having this wonderful blog. I used your recipe for the butternut squash soup tonite and the soup turned out to be wonderful. My husband who was not only sick, but also exhausted from work, and I enjoyed this miracle – a miracle because I am not a good cook and this soup was just perfect. Thanks for sharing all your recipes and techniques with us -the hurried, the too busy and the too inexperienced in the kitchen.
Stay blessed,
Anais
Any thoughts on putting out a cookbook??? Would LOVE that. :)
Made your peanut butter cookies yesterday with my granddaughters. Best ones I’ve made!
I have used your vegetarian recipes for a few weeks and still cannot get over how perfectly super great tasting every meal has been! Awesome, Thank You very much. No more meat for us.
Hi Ali,
I am making a carrot cake for my daughter’s wedding. Just got on the computer and I’m already convinced that your recipe is the one! I’d like to do a large sheet cake to cut for the guests. Will that work or is it better in smaller pans? I’m not a professional baker but it sounds like this will be perfect! Please advise.
Many thanks!
Martha
Hey Ali! Just got back from the AP Reading in KC and thought of You! Downtown is sure picking up thanks to the streetcar. There was the huge social event near Union Station (1st Friday of the month), and seemed like bands and social events were popping up everywhere. Anyway, just wanted to touch base and say “Hi!”
Ann
Oh my stars! I am so excited to make falafel. I’ve feared making them, but love falafel, and thanks to you I feel like I’m up for giving it a try. I love your recipes and more importantly my family loves your recipes. You cook and eat like we love to eat. Thanks for this!
I was wondering what went into Za Atar seasoning. It’s what is served on my favorite Naan bread at Ali Baba’s Mediterranean Restaurant in Dallas, Texas. I googled it and found your cooking site. One thing led to another (I watched your wedding video and some monthly videos) and here we are. You two are so cute and seem so sweet. I wish you the best in all your endeavors. Can’t wait to try my first recipe from you (Best Chicken Enchiladas) with that special Red Sauce! I’m from Texas and I love LOVE Mexican food. The spicer the better. I look further on your site for Paella… I’ve always wanted to make it. I’m 62 and like to try new things. I am tending to eat more veggies, fruits and lots of greens for health, so your blog is really interesting to me. Thank you for your hard work and pics and everything. God bless you!
Ali, I’m so excited to find you again! I subscribed to your blog years ago with an email account I no longer use. I’ll sign up again. Living in Barcelona must be so amazing. Thanks for all great recipes!
Looking forward to trying some of your recipes. I’ve been cooking for lots of years but have lost my enthusiasm for it. Need inspuration.
OMG I made your egg drop soup. Soooooo yummy and that’s saying something considering I’m half Chinese!! If you’re reading Ali’s blog and you don’t try the Egg Drop Soup Recipe you are crazy. So easy and my mom (She’s Chinese!!) loved it.
Just found your site when I was looking for a Moscow Mule recipe. I read through your day in the life blog and your about me and watching some of your videos on the side! Everything looks amazing. I will be following you now and looking forward to it! Great job! Jenn
I hope you write a cookbook in the near future- I’ve been keeping an eye out for this, not just for myself, but for several of my friends. You a Have been my go-to for years. My kids love your recipes, I love your recipes too! Thanks for not forcing yourself into a niche!!
Ali – love all your recipes! Question on the Roasted Tomato Salsa – do you put any seasonings on the tomatoes, onions, garlic and jalapenos when you roast them in the oven? The great picture looks like there’s maybe some salt & pepper? Or perhaps it just the blistering from the broil? Thank you – and again, love love all your recipes!
Love your recipes! And so cool that you are from KC. I’m from Independence myself. I feel like I can always find a good, high quality recipe when in need of it. I need to follow you on Instagram as I would love to go back to Spain! Keep on blogging!
Sarah