All posts in side dishes

Butter Lettuce Salad with Mango and Avocado

04.26.13 // Comments:24

Today is Tim’s birthday, which makes it the perfect time to tell you how another year of living life with him—cooking together, working side by side, analyzing the nuanced details of relationships with each other, budgeting, traveling, laughing, yelling, learning about each other and from each other—has been such a gift. What is also a gift is that today’s post is not from me, but from him. He had something he wanted to say, and I cried when I read it. Hope you all enjoy it as much as I do.

Butter Lettuce Salad with Avocado and Mango

Today is my birthday. Ordinarily you would be reading a post from Shanna, and so I apologize today, because I know it sucks when you don’t hear from her—I know because I enjoy reading her writing more than you do. But for some reason, every now and again on my birthday I get strange feelings to do something out of the ordinary. I think it stems back in part to the kind of birthdays I had with my mom. My mom always let me skip school on my birthday, and it always felt like such a great gift, since I disliked school so much.

Butter Lettuce

There is something about the security of the ordinary days that gives you the strength to have the extraordinary ones. There is something freeing about structure and rules. My mom was the type of mom that made you feel like you could ask her anything and she would have a helpful response. Even if she didn’t know the answer and said so, it was the manner of her presence that made you feel like she could be trusted with your questions. She cared and, because she cared, the everyday routines and happenings provided a place of safety and growth, with protection for that growth. Self-control is a wonderful gift and parenting in such a way that helps to instill self-control, while also allowing expression, is a balance that comes out of a heart that is balanced–something my mom had. Read more…

Comments:24 Click here to comment! Categories: salad, side dishes

Bruschetta Sauce with Balsamic & Fresh Fennel

04.23.13 // Comments:30

The other day, I bought fresh fennel at the grocery store.

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Fresh fennel, if you’re not familiar with it, is awkward and big, not unlike many of us were when we were back in junior high. Undeterred by the way my two bulbs wouldn’t fit inside a standard produce bag, their dill-like fronds poking out on top, I carried those towering bodies proudly to the checkout line, along with the other items in my cart. Then, I took them home to Tim, laying their bodies across our cutting board, where, together, we deconstructed them, like vegetable surgeons working as a team: The tops, we chopped for garnishes. The stems, we boiled into broth. The bulbs, we cut to wedges and sidled along onions to cook slowly on the stove. An hour or so later, in return for all these efforts, we ate the braised bulbs for dinner, and, as we did, I made a discovery. This past week, or specifically, this particular moment sitting across from Tim at the table with plates of fennel as our meal, I learned I hate, and I mean, hate, cooked fennel (or, at least, cooked fennel that tastes anything remotely like the version we made). Since there are weeks, nay, entire months, of my life where I can’t remember learning anything notable, particularly between the high school years of 1996 and 2000, I guess you could say this was not a complete waste of time.

Besides the cooked fennel, our kitchen has seen a revolving door of new recipes this last week: sesame tahini cookies, chocolate banana smoothies as thick as ice cream, homemade honey mustard with roasted sweet potatoes and a seriously unusual raw lemon tahini pie. Nothing was as shockingly memorable as that batch of fennel. Nothing was as good as this bruschetta.

bruschetta with no-cook tomato sauce, balsamic and fennel
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Comments:30 Click here to comment! Categories: entree, sauce, side dishes

Guest Post at G0lubka: Garlic Onion Vegetable Dip

04.21.13 // Comments:Comments Off

Hi, gang. Today’s post is something of a bonus for the week because it’s actually a guest post published over at the ever beautiful, truly inspiring g0lubka blog. While they’re in the midst of editing an upcoming cookbook (set to publish in 2014!), Anya’s been gathering a series of guest posts from fellow bloggers for her site. The first, published last week, featured truly stunning lemon tarts from another talent you may recognize, the lovely Laura of The First Mess, and it had us salivating.

Anyway, we’re so honored to post at g0lubka because it is a site defined by beauty, whole foods and a wonderful perspective that embraces the idea of trying new foods and knowing when to be flexible. In our post today, we’re sharing a super simple garlic onion veggie dip, which was truly Tim’s brainchild. The base isn’t sour cream or yogurt, but, are you ready for this, cashews—and, trust me when I tell you, it’s good enough to eat with a spoon!

Read the post and check out the recipe over at g0lubka, and then set aside a little time to look around—if you’re like me, you’ll find plenty of recipes to bookmark and try.

Comments:Comments Off Click here to comment! Categories: condiments, gluten-free, guest post, sauce, side dishes