I've been a bad, bad blogger.

Yes, I've been slacking on the blog front. There's just a lot going on; my newest freelance client asked me to work for them in-house, full-time for about a month or so this spring, so I'm scurrying to make headway on other freelance projects before that starts, since I'll be in an office forty hours per week for the first time in a long time. I'm really excited for the change of pace; I'll get to work on some interesting projects and put on real clothes and speak with someone other than my cat.

Anyway, I just wanted to pop in and drop a few photos before I put up some more substantial posts later this week.

If you've been reading Choice of Pies, you know about my culinary slump, and the great news is I'm finally starting to crawl out of it. I decided, in a fit of frustration, to go back to the basics, and that has helped a lot. Over the past couple of weeks, I've made a few dishes that used to be old standbys for me that somehow dropped out of the rotation. Like stuffed shells:


The filling is so easy: low-fat ricotta, part-skim mozzarella cheese, maybe some parmesan or asiago if you have it, an egg, and some dried Italian herb blend (or fresh herbs, if you have them). I had some leftover spaghetti sauce that I used, but since there wasn't much of it, I sauteed a bunch of frozen spinach and mixed it in to stretch the sauce. I stuffed the boiled shells, topped them with my "Florentine" sauce, and sprinkled some mozzarella on top, then baked it at 375 for about half an hour. Easy, not very expensive, and very tasty served with a big green salad; Dan was thrilled.


I also made one of Dan's favorites: my mom's mac and cheese. It's the easiest mac and cheese ever - one dish, no white sauce - and it comes out perfectly every time. I'll post the recipe tomorrow. This is not the healthiest recipe I've got, but it's delicious and worth it and since almost all my dinners are low-fat I figure I can splurge once in a while.


And lastly, that old classic beef stew: perfect for the drizzly mud-season weather we've got now. I made this on Saturday afternoon, while we stayed home and watched movies; the whole house smelled great as it bubbled away, and I let it cook so long that the meat was falling-apart tender. We ate it while watching another movie (on Dan's laptop, since our DVD player is broken) and enjoyed sopping up the broth with spiced Ethiopian honey bread that we had picked up that morning at the farmer's market. I'm going to have to look for a recipe, because that bread was tasty.

So there you have it: there is a light at the end of my takeout tunnel, and I'm finally crawling out of this slump. Check back tomorrow for Mom's mac and cheese recipe and a review of a great food memoir that I read recently.

Notice a pattern?

Here's a shot of a recent meal: brown rice and lentils, topped with fried onions with garam masala and plain yogurt, served with a side of shredded root veg salad on romaine.



And here's another recent dinner: grilled cheese sandwiches, sliced cucumbers, and shredded root veg salad on a bed of romaine.


And you've seen this one before: a recent fish dinner served with - what else? - shredded root veg salad and romaine.


Yep, it's fair to say I've fallen in to a rut. The root veg salad is great, especially with goat cheese and pecans, but I've come to rely on it a little too much. And it's not just the salad: I've been in a cooking slump, which partially accounts for my light posting lately. Even Dan, who normally loves my cooking, has gently noted that my meals have been a bit boring lately. The good news is, I think I've finally - finally! - started to climb out of it. I'll write more next week about a couple of the things I've been doing to shake the dust off my shoulders and get moving in the kitchen.

Making Progress

Remember my New Year's resolutions? I'm not doing so well with the tea, but I am making progress with the fish. Last week I stocked up on frozen fish fillets, buying swai (Asian river catfish) and Cape Capensis (South African hake). I realize that both selections are about as far from local as you can get; I've got to do some research and see if I can find a store that sells affordable, local fish. In the meantime, I've got enough fish for the time being to last several weeks; I'm trying to start us off at fish dinner once per week and work our way up to twice weekly. Hopefully then we can maintain the habit.


I dipped the swai in a blend of fine cornmeal and Old Bay seasoning, then baked it at 450 for about twenty-five minutes - until cooked through and flaky. I also baked some potatoes from our latest CSA share and served the shredded root veggie salad on a bed of romaine. The fish was okay, but a little bland. I'm looking for more interesting ways to cook it, since it's apparently not the most flavorful fillet. Any ideas? I'm open to suggestions.

P.S. Happy St. Patrick's Day! Last year I made corned beef and cabbage. This year I'm making barbecue ribs, for no particular reason at all.

I yam what I yam...

... and that's a lady who loves her spinach. Baby spinach, especially. Fresh, local, organic baby spinach for the first time in months! This salad was amazing - just spinach, a shredded carrot, and some sprouts with a very lemony dressing (lemon juice + salt + EVOO). I had some last night with homemade cheese pizza (this dough recipe is still amazing - I made another quadruple batch yesterday and froze three extra balls).


I buy shredded mozzarella in a big two-pound bag for $7.99. Two pounds yields approximately eight cups, which is enough for at least eight pizzas, depending on how cheesy I'm feeling. I use tomato puree (one 28oz can has enough for at least twelve pizzas) and I buy the flour and yeast for the dough from the Coop bulk bins, so pizza is a very cheap meal (and if you go easy on the cheese, it's pretty healthy paired with a salad). Each pizza provides dinner and lunch the next day for the two of us, so I'd wager it comes out to less than fifty cents per serving. Even when we have to buy lettuce from the grocery store, I'm pretty sure pizza and a salad comes out to around $1.00 per serving. Definitely thrifty, tasty, and easy!

Salad Days: Root Veg with Chevre and Toasted Pecans

This week's salad is without question the best salad I have ever had. The recipe for the shredded root veg slaw came via email from a fellow CSA member after several people had asked for recommendations on how to deal with all the root veggies. The root veg mix is delicious and keeps well in the fridge for several days; I've enjoyed having it on hand so I can serve it as a side dish, add some color to a tossed salad, or, as in this case, make it the centerpiece of a hearty salad entree.

We enjoyed this salad on Friday the 13th as part of our early Valentine's celebration, since we had plans with friends on the day itself. For the past few years, our Valentine's routine has been to pop a bottle of champagne, order Thai or Chinese, and make creme brulee (Dan's favorite). However, this year, since we're trying to spend less, I nixed the takeout and budgeted $10 for good cheese instead, planning to serve it along with a salad. We also postponed the creme brulee since this month is packed with desserts already (some of which you've already seen).


Picking the cheese was hard because there were so many amazing selections at the Coop. I went in thinking I'd like something local and made from raw goat's milk. Since we live right on the border with Vermont, the local options are abundant. However, some of the imported cheeses looked so tempting that my resolve wavered. Ultimately, I decided to split the budget, selecting one imported, semisoft, raw, cow's milk cheese and one local, soft, pasteurized, goat's milk cheese. We snacked on the imported cheese, a Morbier from France, while I grated the veggies for the salad and Dan did the dishes. Morbier is a creamy, slightly bitter cheese with a pungent smell but a mild and faintly nutty taste. It is made of two layers, separated by ash; traditionally, farmers would pour leftover curds from Gruyere de Comte in to a mold in the evening, then cover it with a layer of ash to preserve it, and top it off with more curds from the next morning's batch. Now it is generally made from one batch but the ash layer is kept for tradition. We both enjoyed this cheese very much, but I'm not sure I'd buy it again soon; there are just too many cheeses out there that I haven't tried yet.


The local chevre went on top of the root veg slaw, along with some toasted pecans, all with a bed of mesclun. The combination was simple but fantastic. You know how when you taste something delicious, the first few bites taste the best, but then you sort of get used to it? That didn't happen with this salad. With every bite, I was surprised; every forkful was bursting with flavor and new taste. I think it's just the perfect balance of earthy, tangy, sweet, and nutty flavors, and the mix of textures - smooth, crunchy, crisp - offers so much variety that it stays interesting even if you eat a huge platter. We've already repeated this salad and I know it will become a regular menu item for us.

Judi's Winter Root Salad

8 cups grated root vegetables (beets, turnips, carrots, daikon, celeriac, etc., plus one garlic clove)
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons olive oil
1.5 tablespoons vinegar

Mix it all together. Lasts in the refrigerator for several days. I omitted the garlic and used a German stone-ground mustard instead. I only used beets, carrots, and celeriac in mine. Grating all these veggies by hand would be a pain (literally, for my bad wrists); my yard-sale Salad Shooter does the trick in two minutes.
Best Winter Salad

4 cups mesclun (rinsed and spun)
3 cups Judi's Winter Root Salad
2 oz chevre (about half a small log)
1/3 cup chopped pecans

Set oven to 300. Spread pecans on an ungreased cookie sheet and toast in oven until they smell wonderful (about eight minutes). Divide mesclun between two plates. Scoop half of the root veg slaw on to each plate. Top each serving with dollops of chevre and toasted pecans. Serves 2.

Salad Days: The Ploughman's

I'm running a little behind this week. The special project that I've been talking about for the past couple weeks will finally be posted here TOMORROW, so hopefully that will make up for it.

Anyway, on to this week's salad. I had big plans for this week. These plans involved corn, sauteed with scallions and garlic, and an avocado, and a salsa dressing. I was excited about this salad. It was almost finished, too, when I popped a piece of avocado in my mouth - and promptly spit it back out again. I'm not sure why, but it was horribly bitter, and the awful taste lingered for a long time.

Without the avocado, I had nothing - it was to be the centerpiece of this salad. But we still needed to eat. Luckily, I had baked some fresh bread that day (my first ever loaf from scratch - a 7-grain sourdough boule), and that had actually turned out pretty well. So I quickly added some cucumbers to the prepared lettuce to make a simple side salad, and shifted the focus of our dinner to an old favorite from our time in the UK - the ploughman's lunch. The ploughman's, a staple of British pubs, is simply bread and cheese, usually served with some sort of pickle relish and some greens on the side. Depending on how fancy the pub is, you might get a token shred of wilted lettuce or a full, fresh salad, and either one hunk of cheese or a nice assortment. All we had on hand was some sharp Vermont cheddar, but that was good enough, especially paired with the homemade bread.


This meal was just another reminder that in the kitchen, as elsewhere in life, things don't always go according to plan - but they usually turn out okay.

Salad Days: Butternut Squash with Spiced Pecans and Roasted-Garlic Vinaigrette

We received several butternut squashes in the first two winter CSA pick-ups; most were roasted, mashed, and frozen for later use. It has been helpful to have on hand; I move it to the fridge in the morning, then heat it up in a casserole dish in the oven while I get the rest of the meal ready. (You could use a microwave, too, but I don't have one, so oven it is!) But I still had a few whole butternuts and I wanted to try something different, so I came up with this salad.


The butternut is cubed and roasted. Near the end of the cooking time, some garlic cloves are tossed in the oven; they become the basis for a crunchy, garlicky vinaigrette that is drizzled over the warm squash and fresh greens. The finishing touch is a spicy, sweet, crunchy sprinkle of pecans, pan-toasted with some butter and garam masala (yes, I love this spice mix!). The end result is a hearty and satisfying mix of textures and flavors. This salad was an experiment, and I would call it a success; Dan managed to wolf his down before I could even ask if he liked it (about five minutes after handing him the plate).

Butternut Squash Salad with Spiced Pecans and Roasted Garlic Vinaigrette

1 small butternut squash
salad greens (enough for two people)
four cloves garlic
1 tablespoons and 1 teaspoon olive oil, divided
1 teaspoon butter
1/2 cup pecans
1 1/2 teaspoons garam masala
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon dried mustard
salt, to taste

Set oven to 350. Roast whole squash for twenty minutes; remove and set aside until cool enough to comfortably handle. When cool, cut in half lengthwise and scoop out seeds and stringy bits. Peel and chop into large (1") chunks. Spread on cookie sheet lightly greased with cooking spray (such as Pam). Return to oven and roast for another thirty minutes or until very tender, stirring occasionally.

While squash is roasting, wash and spin your greens and place in salad bowl.

When squash chunks have about fifteen minutes left, toss garlic cloves with one teaspoon olive oil in small baking or casserole dish; place in oven.

While garlic and squash roast, prepare your pecans. Melt butter in large saute pan over medium low heat. Add pecans and garam masala, stirring frequently for about five minutes, or until pecans smell nice and toasty.

Remove squash and garlic from oven. Place garlic in food processor with one tablespoon olive oil, cider vinegar, mustard, and salt, and blend. Add squash and vinaigrette to salad bowl and toss. Sprinkle pecans on top before serving.

Salad Days: Wilted Baby Spinach with Toasted Pine Nuts and Pomegranate Vinaigrette

In the winter, when root vegetables dominate, I try to make sure that we have salad as an entree at least once a week - there's something so refreshing about fresh greens breaking up the starchy monotony. In this spirit, I'm introducing a new series: salad days. Once a week, through the winter, I'll post a different salad recipe that is hearty and filling enough to serve as a main dish.

The first offering, warm spinach salad with pomegranate and pine nuts, is one I first came across about a year ago. After making it once, I was hooked. I made this salad several times last winter while pomegranates were in season, and I've been waiting all year for them to come back so I could make it again.


I found the recipe in The Armenian Table by Victoria Jenanyan Wise. I've tweaked it slightly. I use pomegranate juice instead of pomegranate molasses; I couldn't find the molasses and I think it would be too sweet for my taste, anyway. I love the sour tang of the juice. Also, Wise's recipe calls for walnuts, and I've made it that way, but once I substituted pine nuts, I could never go back - it just added so much more depth and contrast of flavor.

Wilted Baby Spinach Salad with Toasted Pine Nuts and Pomegranate Vinaigrette
adapted from The Armenian Table: More than 165 Treasured Recipes That Bring Together Ancient Flavors and 21st-Century Style by Victoria Jenanyan Wise

8 cups baby spinach leaves
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup pine nuts
3 tablespoons pomegranate juice
1 1/2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
seeds from one pomegranate

Rinse and spin dry spinach and place in salad bowl.

Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the pine nuts and cook, stirring frequently, until toasted, 2-3 minutes. When the smell becomes strong and the nuts start to turn golden, they are done. Turn the heat off, add the pomegranate juice and vinegar, and stir to mix. Add hot dressing to spinach and toss. Sprinkle pomegranate seeds on top.

Sorta-Stuffed Squash

Here's the stuffed squash post I mentioned last Friday. I call it Sorta-Stuffed Squash because every stuffed squash recipe I've ever seen involves stuffing the squash and then baking it. Sometimes the squash is partially baked first, but it always ends up in the oven after being stuffed with some sort of mixture, usually rice-based. This recipe cheats by cooking the filling separately from the squash and just throwing them together at the end.

You might think cooking the squash and the filling separately is more complicated, but both steps are actually very easy and totally hands-off once you've got them on the heat. After halving the squash and scooping out the seeds, put a pat of butter in the hollow of each half and roast them, cut side up, for about 35 minutes at 400 degrees. The exact time will vary from squash to squash, but they should be tender when you stick a fork in them.



Once the squash is in the oven, make Rebecca Blood's brown rice and lentil recipe, which I've mentioned before. It couldn't be simpler - just lentils, rice, and water - then add salt and/or a little red wine vinegar when it's done. The lentils take about 25-30 minutes to cook, so your squash and your lentils will be done around the same time. Meanwhile, rinse and spin your lettuce, make your dressing, and you've still got twenty minutes to check email, watch the news, or - my favorite - enjoy a glass of wine.

When both the squash and the lentils are ready, scoop the lentils into the squash hollow. Tada! You're done. The rice and lentils absorb some of the melted butter from the squash, and the sweetness of the roasted squash nicely complements the salted, earthy taste of the lentils. This meal is a hat trick: easy, healthy, and cheap.

Out of the Box: Final Week of the Summer

Our CSA "summer" share actually lasted well in to October. Here's a shot of our final weekly pickup, which included potatoes, beets, celeriac, leeks, rainbow chard, dinosaur kale, cabbage, carrots, butternut squash, delicata squash, broccoli, and brussels sprouts.

Both the butternut squash and the kale I cooked and then froze for later use. Everything else I used in various dishes that I will post about over the next week or so, except for the celeriac, which I still haven't used! Luckily it's a root vegetable and keeps very well.

Here's the delicata squash after I sliced off the ends and cut it lengthwise, but before I scooped out the seeds. We received delicatas several times over the summer; the first time, I roasted the two squash halves with some water in the pan, and the result was indeed very delicate, with the texture of a very soft puree and a taste reminiscent of apples and pears. I also tried a delicata and gruyere soup, which was a huge disappointment: it was somehow too bland and too sweet at the same time (to me, anyway; Dan enjoyed it, but he's easy to please).

With this delicata, I think I finally found a method that really brings out the best flavor of the squash. I left the skin on and chopped the squash in to small chunks, which I tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roasted at 400 degrees for about twenty-five minutes, stirring once or twice. The result was amazing: the flesh was tender, the skin crispy, and the salt and pepper provided a nice, kicky contrast to the natural sweetness of the squash.


I tossed the warm, roasted squash cubes with dried cranberries and toasted pine nuts and added a simple side salad with mustard vinaigrette. This was a very satisfying and delicious meal, and the leftovers were not leftover for long; Dan couldn't pass through the kitchen without grabbing a few more bites, and I certainly couldn't blame him.

potato-leek soup

Remember the potato-leek soup in progress that I posted the other day? Here is a shot of the finished product from another batch. We had this for lunch on Saturday with a side salad of field greens, carrots, and Macintosh apples in Greek dressing.

POTATO-LEEK SOUP
2 leeks
5-6 medium russet potatoes
1 tablespoon olive oil or butter
1 can broth of your choice (I like fat-free, low-sodium chicken)
water
salt and pepper to taste

Wash the leeks thoroughly. Since dirt gets between the layers, I find the best way to do this is to cut the green part off, then slice the white part in half down the center and gently peel back the layers under running water, looking for clods of dirt. Slice the white parts thinly and saute them in butter or oil in a deep stock pot.

While the leeks are cooking, wash and thinly slice the potatoes. You can peel them first if you want, but the peel has fiber and adds a nice shot of color. Once the leeks are soft, add the potatoes and the can of broth. Add one or two cans full of water - enough to cover all the potatoes and leeks. Add chopped leek greens. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer for about 25 minutes, until potatoes are very tender. Remove from heat. Using a potato masher, break up the potatoes. If you want a really smooth soup, you could use a hand-held blender, but I prefer a slightly chunky texture. Stir to incorporate and season to taste. Makes four servings.

two more meals from week 7

We seemed to have a bottomless bowl of confetti salad. It didn't seem like much at first, but I kept serving it and serving it and still there was some left. It was delicious, but after a few days, I started getting antsy for some variety. Here, I served it as a side dish with some spicy Italian turkey sausage that I sauteed with the green pepper from week 7. I was lazy and bought focaccia bread to serve on the side. I always feel bad when I buy focaccia because it only has a few ingredients in it and is one of the simplest breads to make. This night, I just couldn't be bothered to put the time in, so I went store-bought.

Here's where we FINALLY used up the last of the confetti salad! It seemed like a good accompaniment to a hot dog. I don't know what it is with me and hot dogs lately but I have eaten more hot dogs in the past few months that I did in the previous two decades. All of a sudden last April I got a powerful craving for hot dogs. I ignored it for a few days because I don't actually like hot dogs. Or so I thought. When I finally gave in, I was shocked - they were delicious! I think we're now on our third pack since then. These are Hebrew Nationals, which I find to be the tastiest, served on wholegrain buns with sauerkraut and mustard.

The white-ish looking salad in the foreground is my attempt at kohlrabi slaw. Kohlrabi is new for me this year. The two other times we got some in our CSA box, I cut them up and put them in stir fry. This time, I mixed shredded kohlrabi and a shredded Granny Smith apple with scallions, dried cranberries, and an attempt at a sweet-and-sour dressing involving vinegar, lemon juice, and sugar. I wasn't wowed, so I threw in some Bragg's Liquid Aminos, a super-healthy soy sauce alternative. It still didn't do much for me. Luckily Dan thought it was alright so he finished it up and I didn't have to feel bad about wasting food. I know there are a million ways to prepare kohlrabi, so I'll just have to keep trying until I find a way that I like.

Caprese

Blech. Is there anything more disgusting than tomato innards? So slimy and goopy and gross. I'm not a huge fan of raw tomatoes. I'd much rather have them cooked in a sauce, stuffed and baked, or lightly grilled. But with tomatoes and fresh basil in the box this week, only one thing made sense: caprese. It's one of the few ways I will eat raw tomatoes. So I bought some fresh mozzarella and powered through the gross part to get to the goodness. Chopped tomatoes, chunks of mozz, fresh basil, and a little olive oil on top, served with a side of focaccia bread. Dan, my hubby, loves raw tomatoes, and both the tomatoes and cheese were soft and small enough for his post-surgery self to swallow. It's not exactly the healthiest salad on earth, but after the week we've had, we deserve some cheese.

Confetti Salad

For my first meal from this week's amazing bounty, I decided to try The New Moosewood Cookbook's raw vegetable salad. Basically, the idea is that any vegetable can be eaten raw if you chop it small enough, so grab whatever you have -- the more different kinds and colors, the better -- and mince or grate them all. I picked squash, zucchini, scallions, and purple pepper from our CSA box, as well as carrots and celery that we had on hand. (A cucumber is pictured, but I didn't end up using it.) The celery was the only thing I minced manually; I used the kitchen shears on the scallions and threw everything else in to my trusty salad shooter. Consequently, this salad took about five minutes to prepare.

See how pretty it looks with all the different colors? Like confetti. Once everything is chopped or grated, just stir it up and add the salad dressing of your choice.

I decided to take another page from Moosewood and use their green salad dressing. It's a slightly odd mix of fresh herbs, spinach (or kale, in my case, since we didn't have spinach), lemon juice, and buttermilk. It was fresh and tangy and worked well with the raw veggies. The overall effect was very light and tasty; there's something about this salad that reminds me of fresh salsa, even though it's not spicy. It would make an incredible burrito filling -- I'm thinking with mashed pink pintos and a little queso blanco in a whole wheat tortilla. Yum!

by special request

Strawberry soup, because my hubby asked for it.

Just strawberries, yogurt, and orange juice blended together. Really more of a thin smoothie, served with a spoon. I made a simple salad (lettuce, carrots, apples, cheddar) and we ate while watching Goodnight Burbank.

That didn't last long.

It was a very simple meal, but Dan loved it. It's nice that he's so easy to please.

spinach, two ways

After a couple of days of salads for dinner, I was ready for something a little different. I decided to tackle the rather large bag of spinach. I'm not a huge spinach eater; I do use frozen spinach a lot in the winter when fresh, local greens aren't available, but given the option, I'll usually choose other greens. The one exception is this amazing pomegranate and spinach salad recipe from The Armenian Table, an excellent cookbook that I received as a Christmas present from my (Armenian) mother-in-law. That salad was so wonderful I must have made it about ten times in three weeks, and I went through withdrawal when the pomegranates disappeared from the grocery store shelves.

Anyway, back to the spinach - I decided to use some of it for a pasta dish. I sauteed it with some onions and garlic in a little olive oil, then tossed it with penne and (for lack of ricotta) cottage cheese. A little grated asiago on top finished it off. It was an okay supper, but not quite as good as I expected it to be. I think next time it would be better with feta. (Doesn't that sound like a tagline? "Everything's betta with feta!")

We had some leftover, so I put it in our bentos the next day, along with a simple salad (lettuce, carrots, walnuts, dried cranberries) and some turkey pepperoni for protein.

By the next night, Thursday, I was really sick of salads and terrified of how much spinach remained. I decided it could only be handled with cheese. Bring on the calzones!

Whole-wheat pizza dough from the Coop is reasonably healthy but probably did little to counteract the cheesezilla action as seen in this picture. Four different cheeses combined to make this one tasty calzone: mozzarella, provolone, ricotta, and feta. At least they were all low-fat cheeses, but the cumulative fat factor = not so great. Still, there was (some) spinach in there. We added a little marinara for dipping and had one deliciously cheesy meal.

Now for the bad news: we STILL have spinach left from week one, and today, in box number two, we received more. Lots more. Probably like five pounds more. And there's only two of us (that are human). Unless Ashley the cat takes a liking to fresh greens, I think we're stuck with a spinach surplus.

salad, take two

Now this salad, while similar to the last one, was much more satisfying. In fact, it was downright hearty. I was so stuffed that I didn't even eat dessert (a VERY RARE occurrence).

I used the enormous mutant lettuce as a base, and topped it with celery, carrots, Granny Smith apples, cheddar cheese, dried cranberries, and walnuts. It's dressed with my mustard vinaigrette, as usual. This time I shredded the carrots using our Salad Shooter. It's one of those weird little gadgets that I probably wouldn't have purchased on my own, but we received one as a gift from my sister-in-law and it has turned out to be one of the best gifts I've ever received. It's amazingly fast and easy, and I use it constantly. It takes so much of the work out of the whole shredding process - my grater is pretty much obsolete at this point.Post Options

Here's the first of many salads that we will eat this week. I used some of the colossal lettuce as well as some mixed greens (baby spinach, mustard, arugula, and several more that I can't identify). This night, I was craving all things crunchy, so I loaded up on celery, carrots, radishes, cucumbers, and sunflower seeds. I used my basic mustard vinaigrette (salt, dried mustard, champagne vinegar, and olive oil) that I put on almost all salads.

It was a tasty salad, but not quite filling enough. Thankfully, we had the rhubarb for a delicious dessert. I used Phat Duck's compote recipe, made with orange liqueur, and it was fantastic! The liqueur and the touch of butter really enhanced the natural flavor of the rhubarb. It was a little sweet for my liking, though, so next time I would cut the sugar down to a scant half a cup.



When I have rhubarb, I pretty much do a compote (with or without strawberries) or sometimes a crisp. My grandmother makes wonderful strawberry-rhubarb pies. But I'd like to do something different with it - do you have any suggestions for unusual rhubarb recipes? If so, please post in the comments! I'd love some new ideas.

By the way, that nice cold glass you see in the corner of the compote photo is spiced rum and ginger beer, a favorite drink of mine for summer (so refreshing!).