First, as a recap to yesterday’s excitement over my fabulous breakfast quinoa, and the implication that it was a non-gagging, tasty breakfast to be excited by, I am tortured by the déjà vu-ness I experienced picking my daughter up from daycare. Apparently the lovely, fluffy grains and greek yoghurt caused my daughter such gagging that she unleashed it all down her chest. “I don’t know what this ‘dessert’ is you gave her today, but it all came out. And not just what was in her throat. Lots, and lots.” Nice. I am choosing to assume it was just a tickly … Continue reading →

Tonight’s cooking began by making some homemade ricotta so I could try this sweet breakfast quinoa recipe. It is exactly the kind of thing I tear out of a magazine and paste into my giant recipe binder and most likely never make. I want to be someone who will love a bowl of healthy grains for breakfast and sometimes I can be that person, but sometimes after I enthusiastically plow through my first bowl and offer the rest to my husband and daughter to head shakes and no thank yous, it turns to cementy glue in the fridge. I then … Continue reading →

This afternoon was a flurry of vegetable activity. I had been planning to make a velvety sunchoke and celery root soup, but didn’t really know what I wanted to serve with it. Though  I’ve been wanting to try this Porcini-and-Pecan Pâté and decided to make a whole platter of things to put on crusty bread next to the soup. Figuring I should be making some homemade veggie stock instead of using a carton  or bouillon cube, I found a recipe for some homemade veggie bouillon that seemed promising. So I started with that knowing I’d want to use some in … Continue reading →

I heated up a sausage for Ryan and Audra’s lunch while I ate leftover mushroom broth with broccoli and tofu and I realized something. It wasn’t that I wanted to eat some tasty sausage snack, it’s that, when I cook, I tend to just pick up little bits of whatever to snack on. Realizing that I really had no interest in tasting the sausage – even if I’m “meat starved” for lord’s sake made me realize how much i just pick pick pick at whatever I’m cooking. So instead, I sipped the soulful broth I heated up and focused on … Continue reading →

This morning while sitting outside and enjoying the lovely March morning, crocus and tulips fooled into popping up, lilacs budding, I think of one thing. Breakfast meat. It is only day SIX. I’ve been doing pretty good. But I start calculating the days remaining and can’t help but pine for bacon or chorizo or sausage- the typical star players on weekend mornings. Rather than pine and moan, though, I buck up, head into the kitchen and pull out piles of potential breakfast items: on-their-last-legs cherry tomatoes, a couple strips of grilled mushroom and onion, scallions, cotija, havarti, eggs, cilantro. I … Continue reading →

Tonight it was back to something we might normally cook on any given night. Some comforting egg custard, brothy agedashi tofu and my favorite sesame greens. Mostly it was straight forward, though I had the challenge of figuring out how to make our standard japanese broth without bonito. Thinking umami and smokey I went with some steeped shiitakes and lapsang souchong, a smoked tea. Once they had steeped, I added a sheet of kombu and simmered for about 15 minutes, then removed it. I used about a cup for some chawan mushi, a silky egg custard, gently mixing it with … Continue reading →

Yesterday was pretty much all about leftovers and, in fact, so was today’s lunch. Even if the veggie chili had grown on me taste-wise, enough was enough so I was excited to whip up something new today. I had a couple packages of wild rice tempeh, a big pile of broccoli and some intriguing new condiments to try. Here is yet another not so great camera phone photo of the final meal: I blanched two heads of broccoli and shocked and drained them.  Then, I threw some parmesan and garlic into the food processor until it was finely chopped, added … Continue reading →