Comforting griddle cakes filled with rock shrimp and corn, topped with melting roasted red pepper butter. As many of you know, we're in the midst of a major, never-ending decluttering / cleaning / gardening project on steroids as we get our house ready to put on the market. We hadn't planned to sell quite yet, next year was the target, but the current red-hot real estate market convinced us to suddenly mobilize the effort overnight. Our goal is to downsize, which will be a challenge: we have a ...
Swiss Chard and Lemon Ricotta Pasta
Pasta tossed with swiss chard, lemony ricotta cheese, and parmesan cheese. Bacon lardons are optional. Have you ever thought about the words we borrow from food and cooking to express ourselves in general life? I had some fun with it this morning... Let’s say some big cheese at work chews you out over being a couch potato because you sit around the office all day, happy as a clam. Adding icing to the cake he says you cherry-pick what you want to work on, your ideas are ...
Warm Farro Salad with Spring Vegetables
Warm farro salad tossed with asparagus, fava beans, balsamic roasted tomatoes and goat cheese. Going back and forth between the mountains and the Bay Area this time of year gives me food cravings whiplash. In the Bay Area, we're well into spring with heaps of fresh asparagus, fava beans, strawberries, and spring onions at every farmer's market. The days are warm and sunny, putting me in the mood for salads and grilled veggies. A quick three-hour drive puts us in the mountains, and we emerge ...
Swiss Chard Gratin with Quinoa
A Swiss chard gratin with ricotta and asiago cheeses makes for a great vegetarian comfort dish on a rainy day. What makes you sing? I’m not talking about pretending to be a rock star when your favorite tune comes on the radio; belting out lyrics while driving home from work. No, I mean when you suddenly realize that you’re humming something. Not a song, really, just humming because you’re completely at ease and happy with the moment. A writing teacher once said she ...
Spring Asparagus Quiche
Comforting quiche replacing heavy cream with ricotta cheese, plus asparagus, chives and chevre in a buttery crust. As each season rolls around, I wrap it around me like a blanket, thinking: ‘this is my favorite season’. Summer with overflowing abundance and sunshine. Fall with the smell of harvest in the air, a promise fulfilled. Winter, a time to pull back and quietly replenish. And now spring. From the unfurling of tender new leaves on stiff branches, to daffodils poking sunny heads up ...
Kale – Cauliflower Tart in a Cheddar Crust
Delicious tart of kale, caramelized onions, cauliflower and roasted tomatoes in a cheddar cheese crust. I think we're fitting the rain of one season into one month here in the Bay Area. To be fair, it's not that we're getting a lot of hard, driving, flooding rain. It's more drizzle, light rain, heavy raindrops falling from overladen leaves kind of weather. And we had such a dry winter until now, it doesn't feel PC to complain. The kale in my garden is just thrilled. This is the best ...
Quinoa Potato Cakes & Mustard-Yogurt Sauce
Veggie burger of quinoa, potatoes, pumpkin seed meal and spinach, topped with a mustard-yogurt sauce. A couple of days ago, I posted about the newest addition to my evolving pantry - pumpkin seed meal; and promised to post this recipe that uses it in place of traditional wheat-based breadcrumbs. Making this simple change is such an easy way to make something just a little healthier, and natural. A baby step, so to speak. In truth, revolutionary changes I try to take on are less than ...
True Grit(s)
Stone ground grits cooked with cheddar and smoked gouda cheeses, smokey collard greens, and Swiss chard sauteed with roasted tomatoes. My mom was a southern girl reluctantly transplanted into northern soils as a young bride. She adjusted to her new home, but she missed the hot, sunny days of her youth, and her extended family. One of the ways she kept her southern roots alive was through her childhood ...
Pesto Cauliflower Steaks + Citrus Salad
Cauliflower steaks, dry rubbed with chipotle spice, topped with a kale pesto and toasted breadcrumbs, and laid over a citrus salad. There are challenges to shifting your eating patterns when you’re the only one in your family making that shift. This time last year, I was 100% vegetarian, while Carnivorous Maximus (my husband) patiently waited on the sidelines for me to come to my senses. Initially, he was open to the abundance of leggy kale and whole grains that showed up at the table. Ok, ...
Caramelized Squash and Kale Salad
Kale salad tossed in a cider and honey vinaigrette, topped by squash caramelized with brown sugar. The celebrations of Christmas and Hanukkah are behind us; the hustle and bustle of the New Year not quite here. In between, lies the gift of a few days of quiet; a natural pause, to exhale, and slip inside myself to reflect over the past year, and to think about the year ahead. Hardly revolutionary. In fact, this tradition is thought to date from 153 B.C. with the placement of ...
Chile Rellenos Egg Bake
Egg bake dish packed with chile rellenos of poblano peppers stuffed with corn, black beans, and cheese. Looking for a holiday breakfast? Here's a great one I'm planning on. It's inspired by a recipe I saw in Sunset Magazine years ago for Baked Chiles Rellenos. The recipe is long-lost, but I'll always remember the photo: whole poblano chiles lazily reclining in puffy, cheesy, eggs. The baking powder in the recipe is what makes them fluffy, and my husband swore it was an egg souffle. Feel free to ...
Creamy Pumpkin Polenta & Apple-Feta Crumble
Creamy pumpkin polenta topped with an apple and feta cheese crumble. I have had pumpkin on my brain for weeks, thinking of all the ways I want to use it. And then I realized I was just sitting around and thinking, but not doing very much about it. Honestly, sometimes I think about something so much that it's almost like I really did it... Then I decided to roast my own pumpkin and got very motivated. Nothing like trying a new, simple technique to get me going. In fact it was so ...
