I’m excited to be guest posting at Anthology Magazine this month with a 4-part summer salad series! If you can’t tell by now, I live on salads all summer long, so I’m excited to share some of my favorites. First up, today, is this savory-with-a punch-of-sweet strawberry & feta quinoa salad.
I could eat coconut all day in the summertime. Cold, crunchy, spicy salads like this one with a side of coconut iced tea, followed by coconut ice cream for dessert. I ask you, who needs so much dairy when the coconut exists? (Ok, don’t answer that, I know you cheese-lovers are a passionate bunch). I’m calling this one a “Thai-inspired” dish. Jack and I are talking about taking a trip to Thailand next spring (!)… so until then, I bring you “Thai-ish.” Coconut milk, lime, and red curry are flavors that I am crazy about… and here they create a delicious…
We don’t really like carrots. Ok, I take that back, we like cake made out of carrots, and we like raw carrots, but both Jack and I grew up with a disdain for cooked carrots. Of course, we only knew them as the mushy baby carrot version. Or worse yet, the mushy baby carrots in the pot roast version. We both have memories of our moms smasing the carrots and boiled potatoes together and pouring gravy on top. “But it’s so good this way”, my mom would say… each and every time… as if one day this mush would miraculously…
This is hands down my favorite hot weather snack. Is it hot where you are? It’s about 95 degrees here and I have about a million cucumbers growing in my garden. Sadly, in this heat, the cucumbers are about all I have growing at the moment. But I’ll take my cucumbers and be happy about them. And make salad. This one is generally in my fridge all summer long because it’s just so quick and easy, and it keeps for days. I also find that it’s a great way to add in sea vegetables. They’re not necessary here: the cucumbers are…
This is so not my week. I’m going to keep this very short because I badly injured my thumb last night, and you don’t want to know how long it just took me to type out the recipe at the end of this post… Jack and I made this last Saturday night for dinner. I got the inspiration from this photo of a leek tart that I pinned. Leeks aside, my recipe is entirely different. I decided to try socca (a chickpea flour pancake/dough) as a healthier alternative to puff pastry… not that it’s equivalent to a flaky puff pastry, it’s…
We were on vacation in Nice around this time last year, and I think I ate a nicoise salad for lunch every day of that trip. Or as Jack has coined it, the “Nizzan” salad, because the Italians call Nice “Nizza” (pronounced like pizza). We learned this as were running through the Rome airport (we are always running), and the airport desk workers were yelling out “Nizza! Nizza! last call for Nizza!” So that’s what we call it now. The city and the salad. This is one of my favorite main course salads because it’s so filling yet light and…
“Quick and easy weeknight cooking” hasn’t been something I’ve focused on much here. If something I’ve made happened to be quick, it was by accident more than anything else. I enjoy the process of cooking, and when I’m inspired, hours can fly by. (Although I’ll add the disclaimer that recipes on this site should, by no means, take “hours”). After a particularly stressful day last week, inspiration ran out. I was tired and preoccupied. I had a plethora of vegetables lying around the kitchen begging me not to abandon them for a restaurant. But my jumbled mind couldn’t figure out…
It’s funny when inspiration strikes, or where a good idea finds you…The other day I was sitting at the Discount Tire store, waiting on my car…bored out of my mind. Just me and my phone. After every last email had been replied to and every last tweet read, I went to my go-to time-passing app, Epicurious. They aren’t paying me to write this, but I love this app. It saves me every time… dentist offices, bad movies, you name it… I stopped on this zucchini salsa recipe which completely intrigued me. How could zucchini possibly become a replacement for tomatillos?…
I admit, this picture is minimal, even for us. I mean, is there even a bowl here? Modern art was not exactly what we were going for… we were just hungry. Sometimes we spend a lot of time on our photos, other times, it’s “Got it? Look good? Is it clear? Yes. Great, let’s eat…” In front of my computer the next morning is when I sit alone shaking my head and go, “If only we woulda… Next time we should really…” and then I take a break and enviously pin other people’s photos. But really, I’d rather spend time figuring…
The week of bribing people with food and drink continues… my dad is still working around the house (and he’s staying an extra week now – oh the projects I’m going to dream up right after I finish this post). The other night, Jack’s sister came by to help organize the pantry and closets… I’m on this kick where I want things in order (I’m not always this way), and I’m not above delegation to get things done. So my part was to, of course, make dinner for everyone. My dad and Jack are easy, they are human vacuums for…
My role this week while my dad is visiting = food machine. Which I don’t mind one bit… he’s been hard at work knocking tasks off our “house-to-do” list, and I’m more than happy to be doing the heavy cooking rather than the heavy lifting. I can’t get him to stop for lunch (unless you count the beer… liquid lunch) so for dinners, big bowls of substantial food are in order. I made this quinoa & chickpea salad the other night with some other stuff I happened to have, including beautiful radishes from my CSA box. And I always seem…
We love to eat, travel, cook, and eat some more! We create & photograph vegetarian recipes from our home in Chicago, while our shiba pups eat the kale stems that fall on the kitchen floor.
