Archive for the ‘Eating Vegetables’ Category

The Mother of Invention

Greens, eggs, feta (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

As my college career draws to a close, I find myself running into one problem more consistently than any other. I have no food. The budget is low, time is tight, and the tamarind paste to usefulness ratio is completely out of whack.

There have been some successes in my quest to empty the pantry, but there have also been some definite mistakes. Pasta, cottage cheese, red pepper flakes. Not so good. Lasagna with curry sauce. Not so good. Today, however, I came up with one of my greatest wins. Steamed greens topped with a fried egg and crumbled feta cheese.

Last Saturday was the opening of the Farmer’s Market in Davidson. I love the market, because it’s the best place to buy produce in this area. The meats and some of the cheeses are a little expensive (though delicious), but you can’t beat a big bag of mixed greens for $2. I found a new vendor at the market selling some of the best feta I’ve had – crumbly, yet thick and salty with a finishing bite of brine. In addition to the greens and feta, I bought baby cabbage, freshly picked strawberries, kohlrabi, arugula, tomatoes, and a basil plant. A good day.

My Farmers Market purchases have been seeing me through the past week. One day I had toasted flatbread with tomatoes, basil, and feta. On another, boiled kohlrabi tossed with butter, rice wine vinegar, salt, and pepper. But today’s invention has definitely been the best.

I’d never cooked greens before this batch – partly because I’d never eaten greens before coming to school in the south. I decided to try a variation on steaming, which involved sticking wet leaves into a skillet with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then covering the skillet with another skillet. » Continue reading this post...

Rouge Paris (a post by Josh): Red Cabbage with Garlic & Sriracha

Sometimes certain smells rip me back to a particular past. If I smell this one perfume, I’m back in my elementary school, walking through a hallway doorway, on my way to 5th grade graduation. Sometimes, this happens with foods too. If I see a large head of cabbage, cut in half displaying the white and purple labyrinth – I am back in the Marais, waiting in line for my second falafel in two days.

If you’ve never been to Paris before, picture this for me – small streets framed with bright white, red, yellow, green and blue door fronts. Hundreds of people packing them on a Sunday afternoon. A cold chill is in the air, so people hunch a bit, and talk louder than Paris normally permits. Groups are stationed as obstacles for the moving, waiting for Ruggelach, shawarma, or falafel and a warm shelter for ten minutes. This is the Marais, “the swamp,” “the fourth,” or the Jewish section of Paris.

Walking in the Marais my first time, I was overtaken by the boisterousness of the store owners ringing people into their shops in French, Italian and English. After we gave a few of their walking advertisements the cold shoulder, my friend ushered me to the corner falafel shop. It’s the one with the red awning, across the sidewalk from the bakery that has “the best Ruggelach in town” and a block from the main road, taking you off to the Seine.

We went inside to get our four euro falafel, then back into the biting cold to wait for the assembly line. Within five minutes, I was holding the epitome of the Marais’ Cuisine – a warmed pita stuffed with chickpea fritters, cucumber salad, tzatziki sauce, garlic, a tomato-chili salsa, and at the bottom, the warm, red cabbage. » Continue reading this post...

Remember the Radish

A bunch of radishes (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

I have just one question. What happened to radishes?

You haven’t thought about radishes for years. They belong to the arsenal of easy vegetables to grow when you’re in fourth grade and learning about gardens and seeds and sex life of plants. After your science class munches those crunchy, rosy bundles, you forget about them completely until one day, you’re walking through the grocery store on a produce kick and wonder what a radish actually tastes like. You remember not being particularly fond of them back in fourth grade, but you have no idea why. Out of curiosity, you buy a bunch. And bam! They’re delicious! You can’t stop eating them! They’re crisp, with the consistency of a water chestnut, but a cleaner taste, and an almost peppery bite.

Ok, so maybe that’s very specifically my relationship to radishes, but I’m willing to guess it’s similar to other people’s as well. If radishes are so good, why are they so easily overlooked? The reason, sadly, could lie with their lack of versatility. Radishes are much better cold than cooked, and are quick to disregard since a bunch bought to chuck in a salad can’t later be made into a sauce or soup. They’re a pretty useless vegetable. They’re hard to cut, hard to use, and hard to remember.

And while radishes make great snacks on their own and are good for you to boot, with lots of folic acid, potassium, ascorbic acid, and vitamin B6, when it comes to recipes, options are limited. It looks like salad, salad, and more salad is the fate for almost all radishes. If the radish is lucky, it may end up in a relish or salsa, but mostly – it’s salad.

Sigh, said the radish.

Lovely radishes (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

The conclusion is sad – but not hopeless. Radishes are, after all, good as snacks and good in salads. » Continue reading this post...

Easy as Dressing Yourself. Or a Salad. Whichever. (a post by Josh): Salad Dressing

There are a few things that I think people need to make at home. Salad dressing is one of many. No more buying them at some store for too much money. It just seems like a waste to have the ingredients in your kitchen, and also a big jar of Ranch dressing (made of who knows what).

This banter is mainly from my countless dinner parties where someone would ask “is there dressing on the salad yet?” “yeah” “oh, what kind?” “I don’t know, I just made it” “OH! How! I don’t think I could do that.”

Yes, yes you can. And yes, those exclamation points are in there for a reason. It’s real simple, though, to make a salad dressing. I’m going off of a vinegrette (and not anything heavy), but here are the basic ingredients: » Continue reading this post...

I’ll Take the Hamburger, Hold the Burger (a post by Lyz and Josh): Balsamic Portobello Mushrooms & Olive Tapenade Toasts

Olive tapenade (Eat me. Drink Me.)

Request! Request! We have a Request for a “vegetarian section with yummy recipes that don’t require a 100 different ingredients.” I think we can do that. Maybe 99 ingredients, but who’s counting?

For me, vegetarianism always seemed like something I should try out. I couldn’t tell you what it was that specifically tipped me over to the other side, but I can say that whenever anyone asked the “why?” question, my response followed:

“I don’t like the taste of meat. And I feel really lethargic after I eat any meat, and that’s not really what I want to feel after eating, you know?”

Both of which are still true today, but I’ve relaxed a bit as to my meat restrictions. Basically, now I don’t cook meat for myself but I’ll have it if someone offers me a meal with meat (see: first day on a farm in New Zealand, and the owner tells me that we’re having lamb that he just killed yesterday).

Partly I don’t cook meat for myself because I don’t enjoy it all that much, but mostly because I can’t cook it. See, I started cooking during my vegetarianism stint in roughly 11th grade. So, most of my repertoire is vegetarian based. Because of that, I used to focus mostly on side dishes, appetizers and some baked goods. I thought entrees consisting of only vegetables would be boring and not satisfying at all. But I had to branch out somehow – I would come home from waiting on tables at 11pm and have to cook myself something to eat. A bunch of side dishes only cut it for so long. So I would scrounge my fridge, throw some oil, garlic and salt in a pan and hop to. A few of these recipes stay as appetizers or side dishes, trying not to call too much attention to themselves, but some of them really started to shine. » Continue reading this post...

Better Days Are Here Again: Pecan, Pear & Blue Cheese Salad

Pecan-Pear Salad (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

The end of Spring Break and the beginning of actual Spring in Davidson are coinciding nicely. Although I ate nothing if not well at the lake, by the end of the week, I found myself craving fruit and sunshine – which could have been the effect of a self-imposed exile to relatively little movement, starch-heavy foods, and the indoors.

Yesterday, after donning an appropriately awkward sunburn gleaned at a table outside the coffee shop, I made the ten minute trek to Harris Teeter (a grocery store chain, if you’re not from the South), and proceeded to buy almost every single piece of produce in the store. Lettuce still dewy from the miniature sprinkler, plump radishes, avocado, cherry tomatoes, oranges, grapefruit, handfuls of lemons and limes –

And so on.

Since bringing those groceries back to my apartment, I’ve been snacking on fruits and making myself delightfully crisp, vegetable-rich meals (avocado, cherry tomato, blue cheese on baguette – go). But my favorite concoction so far has been this pecan, pear, and blue cheese salad. I ate the whole thing slowly, carefully putting together perfect bites of sharp, creamy cheese, sweet pear, and mellow pecan with the perfect amount of spinach and Boston lettuce to curb the richness. Eating this salad, sitting on my front porch, watching people walk by – nothing could be more perfect. Unless, of course, I could enact this scene again without the sunburn.

State of affairs (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

Pecan, Pear & Blue Cheese Salad This salad serves 1.

For the salad: 1 handful Boston lettuce 1 handful baby spinach leaves 1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese 1/4 cup pecans 1/2 pear, thinly sliced

For the dressing: Balsamic vinegar Olive oil Salt Freshly ground black pepper

Lightly toast pecans in a skillet or in the oven, then cut or crush them into smaller pieces. Toss all salad ingredients, including toasted pecans, together. » Continue reading this post...