Sprout & Pea

Last week­end was really lovely — my mom was in town! I dragged her all over Brook­lyn by foot and by ferry and as per usual we spent most of our time eat­ing. Sat­ur­day night, my cousin joined us for din­ner at a deli­cious restau­rant in Brook­lyn Heights called Colonie. I love restau­rants that are con­ducive to shar­ing and Colonie’s menu is tai­lored for just that. We ordered far too many dishes, but we devoured them all. One of the stand­out plates on our table was a roasted car­rot salad with sun­flower sprouts. This was my first intro­duc­tion to these slightly sweet, watery lit­tle greens and I loved them. I adore a dish with sim­ple ingre­di­ents that bal­ance together per­fectly and that’s what hap­pened when I put a lit­tle bit of each ingre­di­ent on my fork. When I came across sun­flower sprouts at the mar­ket this week, I decided to try to recre­ate this dish. Read more:

Arti­chokes are my favorite veg­etable and this is in part because I grew up eat­ing them with my mom’s deli­cious mayo, shal­lot and lemon sauce — a sauce that doesn’t exactly add any health fac­tor to this beau­ti­ful, nutri­tious green veg­etable. I’ve attempted a vari­a­tion on the sauce in the past using Greek yogurt but it just wasn’t quite the addic­tive sauce that I grew up with. Try­ing my best to get back into a healthy eat­ing rou­tine, when I found myself crav­ing an arti­choke tonight, I decided I would pick up some vegan mayo to make the dip­ping sauce with. To my sur­prise, there was only one brand avail­able on the shelf at Whole Foods and the list of ingre­di­ents were end­less and for­eign to me. I put it down and decided to try to make my own vegan mayo.

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After a week­end of eat­ing out, fol­lowed by a Mon­day morn­ing bagel and cream cheese spread at work, my body was hat­ing on me for the gluten, meat and dairy over­load. So, this week I am giv­ing myself a gluten-​​free vegan cleanse in antic­i­pa­tion of indulging again this week­end dur­ing my thir­ti­eth birth­day fes­tiv­i­ties. I was crav­ing greens yes­ter­day and when I went to the mar­ket to pur­chase my favorite veg­etable, an arti­choke, there were none left. So, I browsed the boun­ti­ful aisle of green veg­gies and landed on napa cab­bage. Read more:

In the sum­mer I crave Mex­i­can food and in the win­ter I can­not get enough Thai food. Specif­i­cally, this win­ter. My co-​​workers and I have got­ten into a bad habit of order­ing thai food for lunch on cold, rainy and snowy days and I have got­ten into the bad habit of order­ing it for din­ner on lazy evenings. I decided it was time to stop wast­ing money and stop eat­ing food with mys­tery ingre­di­ents, so the other night I attempted home­made pad thai. Read more:

I’ve never been a fan of mush­rooms, but that all changed this evening when I dis­cov­ered the won­der­ful fla­vors of shi­itake bacon. Recently, I’ve been attempt­ing to curb my win­ter din­ing out addic­tion and really focus on cook­ing deli­cious plant-​​based meals, and this shi­itake bacon is the per­fect way to sat­isfy my crav­ings for rich, savory meaty fla­vors. Read more:

After a fun, but long day shop­ping at Ikea with some friends, instead of build­ing the bed frame that I bought, I decided to make a quick din­ner and plop myself on the couch. This “no-​​rice risotto” is a recipe I had come across ear­lier in the week and was excited to try. It com­pletely hit the spot and gave me the energy I needed the next day to tackle some bed build­ing. Here is the recipe from one of my favorite blogs, Green Kitchen Sto­ries… Read more: