Quinoa Tabbouleh

When I planted my kitchen garden this spring, I decided, sort on a whim, to put in a few Brussels sprouts plants. I've never grown them and I thought it'd be a blast to see what would happen.

Lo and behold, I've got a parsley 9-1-1! The poor plants are being overrun. And some other herbs, too. There's also oregano under those big leaves.

I need to use up that parsley before it gets run out of Dodge. And I have a feeling most people who buy a bunch of parsley at the store have the same feeling: what am I going to do now with all this?

So it's back to our regularly scheduled program: fridge salads. Today's whole grain version is a whimsical one from Bruce. It's like a traditional tabbouleh but with red quinoa instead of bulgur wheat. Honestly, it's a lighter treat on a hot summer day. This salad has been a staple around our house for the last week as the temperature has skyrocketed into the 90s.

So here we go.

Click to read more ...

Lentils aux Lardons

Necessity isn't the mother of invention. Time is.

At least in our home. As you well know, we love lots of salads in the fridge, mostly because they're so easy to pull out during the week. There's lunch ready whenever we are. In minutes.

And lately, I'm all about the minutes. Maybe it's the impatience of my ADVANCED age. I turned fifty today.

Fifty?!?! I don't even know how I let this happen. I know you'll tell me there's only one other option. But if I'd been smarter, I could have figured out a third way.

And no, a face lift doesn't count.

Anyway, I'm all over salads like this one. Because I've got things to do. And fewer minutes to do them in. So on to this bacony salad, modeled on a French classic (only without the egg).

Click to read more ...

Roasted Pepper and Shiitake Salad

Those bell peppers aren't the only thing burning up around here. Apparently, we missed spring in New England. It's going up into the 90s today--and it's only late May!

I fear this heat wave might mean a bad summer ahead. Who knows? The weather here is nuts: rain, snow, sleet, beating sun, heat, humidity. And that's on a Monday. Is it any wonder this place bred Puritans and other scolds?

Ah, well. In celebration of bad weather (!), I thought I'd offer some more of those luscious, make-ahead salads. We keep them in the fridge all week so we can have heaping spoonfuls of this and that for lunch every day.

The point is this: a wide variety in what you eat means you can eat less and be satisfied more quickly. Eating bored--whether you're bored or you're bored with your food--can be a recipe for weight-management disaster, as research shows. (It's pretty well documented in our new book, REAL FOOD HAS CURVES.)

So the salad.

Click to read more ...

Caramelized Leek Tabbouleh

Continuing on with our week of summery salads in anticipation of the publication of our seven-step plan to get off processed food, here's a delicious, easy tabbouleh, a great second salad on the plate with that lentil one from the other day.

When I was in graduate school, I hated tabbouleh. Maybe it was because it was in an English department where they issued Birkenstocks on the first day. Maybe it was because of the prairie skirts. Maybe it was the patchouli.

Whatever the reason, I wanted to wolf down hunks of roasted, sweating meat, if only to be outrageous. Have you ever done that? Just be outrageous for the sheer sake of it? It's so satisfying! (Especially if you were raised in a world where people were constantly outraged by depravity without being outrageous themselves!)

These days, I love tabbouleh salads: light, easy make-aheads. And with caramelized leeks, even inspired.

Click to read more ...

Fort Celery

Last week, Bruce and I have passed a rather auspicious milestone. In just over ten years at this food-writing career, we have crafted, developed, and tested over 5000 recipes.

That's nuts. 

Such a moment could only occur because of eighteen books and counting (that's way more than one a year--almost two a year in fact), zillions of feature articles (just now doing three features in a row for COOKING LIGHT this very week), four national columns running at different times over the years (and The Every Day Gourmet still up and going strong on weightwatchers.com), and even a couple cookbooks for persnickety celebrity types who insist on confidentiality agreements.

If you do the math, you'll realize that ten years = 3650 days--so we're talking more than one published recipe created every day. Sheesh. And my fat hips' damnation.

Was every recipe a winner? By no means! Sure, there are lots of great ones. Wait until you see the grits and ham casserole up this week on the blog. But oh, do we have some great stories.

Click to read more ...

Persimmon Salad

Persimmons are a talisman of my childhood. Not a pleasant memory, mind you--but a stern warning. My grandfather had an American persimmon tree. In Virginia and along the eastern seaboard, indigenous persimmon trees can be scraggly, a bush on steroids. But at his home in the sandy soil of central Oklahoma, the trees become monsters, rough-barked, sometimes over a hundred feet tall.

And bear a wicked fruit that's full of alum, astringent, inedible--until the first hard freeze. Then that orange globe turns mushy brown, even black-specked. The alum morphs, the sweetest sugars bloom, and the whole thing is like a soft, gooey bit of fragrant jelly, held together by a collapsing skin. One bite before the freeze--a frost does not count--and there won't be a drop of moisture left in your mouth for hours. But one bite in your winter woolies and you could swear you've fallen into a world where trees bear candy.

Despite the stern warning, I took the famed bite. I was about eight or so. And I learned the lesson. That I never wanted to eat another persimmon.

Until I found that American persimmons weren't the only game in town. These days, we can find Japanese persimmons, sometimes sold under the name Fuyu (just one of the varietals). They're luscious: candy-like, sweet, sort of firm like a tomato--and in our markets right now. They need no freeze to turn them sticky-sweet, ridiculously fragrant, and irresistible. You might not find them at a run-of-the-mill supermarket but more likely at a high-end one--or better yet, an Asian grocer.

We live in a world without seasons. But not when it comes to Japanese persimmons. They come and go. And they're in right now. Don't hesitate. It takes almost no effort to make them into this fine winter salad. Seasonal eating at its best.

Click to read more ...

Autumnal Wheat Berry Salad

Autumn is one of the best reasons we live in New England. And one of the best reasons we live at the elevation we do (1350 feet above sea level--nothing compared to places out west but fairly high for this part of the world) is that we get astounding color. Incessant frosts begin in mid-September. This picture was taken in our backyard--and it tells the tale: a glorious colorscape.

Which also means it's time to start hunkering down. Yesterday, I chopped out withered plants in the garden while Bruce took the air conditioners out of the bedroom windows and did a little cleaning in the garage. All part of shutting the door on winter.

But not before we celebrate this season. And here's our way: a wheat berry salad that's still got all the raw goodness of summer produce while offering a little taste of the chill to come: hard roots, deep (rather than bright) flavors.

Click to read more ...

Panzanella

Can you believe it's almost Labor Day? The summer has flown by. Where we live, some trees at the back of our property near the brook are already tipping red on the upper branches. The light is more precious--and clearer, too, as if in compensation as the sun sets behind the valley a little earlier than it was doing about a month ago.

Bruce and I celebrated the last bits of summer yesterday with a hearty plate of panzanella, an Italian bread salad made with lots of veggies, particularly sun-ripe tomatoes. Without any ado, because it's the best gift for the end of the season, here it is, ready for your holiday weekend:

Click to read more ...

Curried Quinoa And Cabbage Salad

Under a tight book deadline as I am, I don't have that much time to think about what I eat. (Very ironic for a cookbook author, no?)

Mostly, I try to have things around that'll last me several meals. When deadlines get crazy like this around our house, I can't really rely on Bruce for my meals. He's in the kitchen, cranking out recipe after recipe. He's not really interested in food on any sort of schedule, having sampled this and that on spoons and spatulas since early morning. (Nothing like extinction therapy in your own kitchen to cure overeating.)

Anyway, I made this curried quinoa salad earlier this week and have enjoyed it for several meals. It's an easy, summer, vegetarian dish, so I thought I'd post it here, a great make-ahead salad to take to work or have for a light dinner at home. Plus, there's that quinoa, the super grain, chock full of protein.

Click to read more ...

Curried Chicken Salad

Sometimes, life calls for a picnic.

I just read Jules Clancy's stone soup blog (check for it here) and she had ten tips for a perfect picnic, some of which really made me smile (such as: make sure you have the weekend papers in tow).

I can't think of a better time for a picnic. So we just put together this quick curried salad and are ready for a lunch that's calm, quiet, and just for two.

Click to read more ...