vegetables

front and center.

Spotlight: Rhubarb.

05/19/2011 | 4 Comments | Topics: dessert, food focus, food., recipes, vegetables

Did you like rhubarb growing up? I didn’t. Though I find that to be true of quite a laundry list of foods: tomatoes, bell peppers, avocados, eggplant… now I love them all.
I bought rhubarb the other day through my CSA; I opened the box and my eyes went straight to these long, deep-red stalks. Rhubarb is stunning—probably the envy of celery. Celery gets used more, to be sure. But… [more]

Tomato Eggplant Gratin

04/04/2011 | 4 Comments | Topics: food., recipes, vegetables

This was the one that got away. I made this recipe years ago, just around the time I launched this blog. I loved it, and always meant to share it: but could never find it again. Until last week.
And since last week, I have made it 3 times. No joke.
And despite having it up on a pedestal as one of the best recipes I ever had—and promptly misplaced—it… [more]

side dish twist: roasted pepitas and cauliflower

11/20/2010 | 5 Comments | Topics: food., recipes, vegetables

Roasting vegetables is one of my favorite ways to include vegetables on our daily table. Usually, I mindlessly toss broccoli, carrots or halved brussel sprouts with olive oil and generous grinds of coarse pepper and salt. This time, I was flirting around with pepper and sugar in my current kitchen foray into Mexican Food… many of the dishes I was eyeballing also called for pumpkin seeds.
It is fun to… [more]

Jack ‘o’ lantern cookies

10/20/2010 | 6 Comments | Topics: food., holiday food, recipes, snacks, vegetables

It’s really that time of year: the leaves are turning, dilapidated brown lunch bags hit my morning counter (re-use!!) and backpacks land on the floor in a variety of places. School papers and projects evidence our academic focus… I love that October is all about colors and routines, school books and of course decorating the house for Halloween.
Just this morning the Fedex man came to drop off a package—only… [more]

Eggplant Bites w/Red Sauce

07/17/2010 | 9 Comments | Topics: food., Italian food & wine, recipes, starters, vegetables

Bites, nibbles, crumbly blobs of Parmesan and breadcrumbs on small pieces of eggplant. This experiment made at least a dozen rounds in my kitchen before reaching this blog. It sounded good, but unless I took out duck-tape, the ‘breading’ had no inclination whatsoever to actually stick to the eggplant. I tried egg whites and whole eggs, small sized eggplant and eggplant cakes. The taste profile worked: it is a mini… [more]

oven-roasted broccoli

07/08/2010 | 8 Comments | Topics: food., recipes, vegetables

Please tell me you have tried this. We eat our broccoli this way 90% of the time. And we have it every single week. Yes I am serious. Don’t you have side dishes that are frequent visitors? The stand-by, consistently good, easy-to-make-in-your-sleep vegetables?
This is ours. I was mortified when I was searching my blog-of-over-4-years and ALL THOSE POSTS… [more] and not one, not one of them talked about this ever-present

marinated zucchini

06/02/2010 | 4 Comments | Topics: food., recipes, salad, vegetables

New favorite vegetable: grilled, marinated zucchini.

It is because of this recipe, that my sons fell in love with zucchini. Francesco was a tad bit envious the other day, when I snagged some of these zucchini from the fridge, piled them on a plate and topped them with a poached egg… he even went so far as to sneak a few bites. Every time they add a vegetable to their… [more]

baby artichokes

05/17/2010 | 3 Comments | Topics: food focus, food., vegetables

As a food blogger, I receive my fair share of promotional emails. It might be about a new cookbook, a kitchen tool, a new recipe application for iphone or a food product. Actually, this summer I am testing a new wire contraption for growing tomatoes; no doubt you will hear about that gadget later this year—when my tomatoes are hanging heavily from their stems. Every so often I get an… [more]

fava beans

04/26/2010 | 4 Comments | Topics: food focus, food., vegetables

The truth is, I like getting acquainted with new ingredients, foods, vegetables, products and wine. I like opening a cookbook from an unfamiliar culture. I like a culinary challenge. But mostly, I like to add to my kitchen mastery. Think wizard with a wand—only I wield a sword. My apron is my armor.
I chat a bit, talk a lot, cook and learn, write about it and go out and… [more]

eggplant parmesan

04/11/2010 | 4 Comments | Topics: entree, food focus, food., Italian food & wine, recipes, vegetables

Its hardly fair to call this Eggplant Parmesan—because it isn’t.
Its Eggplant Pecorino. Or so it was when I cooked it with Erika at her Agriturismo in Tuscany.
I just love the common sense of this: why serve guests a dish with cheese that is native to a different region? Mozzarella (which is the typical cheese for Eggplant Parmesan), is native to the Emilia Romagna region… [more]—north of Tuscany.