Sprout & Pea

Brows­ing the mar­ket last night, I was drawn to a bright orange color and two words: honey and tan­ger­ine. As a Florid­ian, I was a bit ashamed that I had never heard of this sweet lit­tle treat that is a native to the sun­shine state. These guys are a cross between a sweet orange and a tan­ger­ine and are just deli­cious. With a recipe in mind and a warm breeze in the air, I picked up some of these honey tan­ger­ines, grabbed a red onion and some hearts of palm and headed home to pre­pare a refresh­ing light sum­mer din­ner. Read more:

This dish is inspired by both my mom’s deli­cious spaghetti squash and a dish i had at a local restau­rant a few years ago. Grow­ing up, one of my favorite side dishes with din­ner was my mom’s sim­ple spaghetti squash with honey and but­ter. It was like candy with my din­ner, only it wasn’t overly sweet and I was get­ting my daily veg­gies in. It wasn’t until I saw a spe­cial for spaghetti squash on the menu at Lodge one night that I thought of the deli­cious stringy veg­etable as a main course. With dou­ble inspi­ra­tion in hand, I decided to make my own twist on this, com­bin­ing my mom’s recipe for spaghetti squash with a few of the top­pings from my din­ner at Lodge– with a few tweaks. Read more:

Farro is a grain that I adore. It has great tex­ture, is packed with pro­tein, is low in gluten, and I have been itch­ing to cook with. Unfor­tu­nately, I always have a hard time find­ing it, so when I came across some in a mar­ket the other day, I decided to splurge a lit­tle on the pricey pack­age. I set out to pre­pare a light farro salad, but after con­sid­er­ing run­ning to the mar­ket for some fresh arugula, I exam­ined my refrig­er­a­tor for left­over ingre­di­ents and quickly changed my mind. With leeks and a green tomato in hand, I started chop­ping and sautéing ingre­di­ents for my impromptu dish. By the time the farro fin­ished cook­ing and I added it into the sautéed veg­gies and topped with some parmi­giano reg­giano, I real­ized I had made myself a risotto.
Read more:

I actu­ally first made these for Cinco de Mayo two weeks ago. The ladies I was feed­ing, how­ever, devoured the entire dish before I had the chance to take a photo. So, on this rainy Sun­day, with a han­ker­ing for Mex­i­can food that I just can’t seem to kick, I made them again. My room­mate, to say the least, was quite happy to test them out for a sec­ond time.

Read more:

For the longest time, I’ve been want­ing to make sweet potato fries and after whip­ping these guys up last night, I’m not quite sure what was stop­ping me. This is one of the sim­plest snacks to pre­pare and if done right, is pretty darn healthy. All you need to do is chop up some sweet pota­toes, toss with olive oil and sea­son­ings of choice and place them in the oven to bake, flip­ping once or twice. Since I had some time to kill while these were bak­ing, I thought I would make some tasty dips for my french fry din­ner. Read more:

Round­ing out a week­end of incred­i­ble food, inter­est­ing peo­ple and inspir­ing places was the quaint bed and break­fast that housed us on our trip– Thyme In The Coun­try. This eco-​​friendly spot is sit­u­ated on a gor­geous farm right out­side of the town of Hud­son, NY. I’m cer­tainly not the first to say that this is the place to stay if you ever find your­self in the area. Aside from the peace­ful atmos­phere, homey feel and adorable decor, Mary, the owner of Thyme In The Coun­try, will make your stay incred­i­bly com­fort­able and mem­o­rable with her big smile, deli­cious home cooked meals and excel­lent knowl­edge of the area — espe­cially some lesser known spots that are worth a visit. Read more: