Sprout & Pea

There’s no telling what is in store for 2012 and frankly I find that excit­ing. I do know that my last days of 2011 and first days of the new year were spent in sun­shine with loved ones and good food, and if that’s any indi­ca­tion for the direc­tion this year is headed, I’ll take it. I flew down to Miami to ring in the new year with my best friend Farah, her new hubby and their gor­geous new house. When Farah started talk­ing about menu plan­ning, I imme­di­ately took the reins and tossed out dishes that I was itch­ing to con­tribute. She wanted to make an orzo pasta salad and I took that as an oppor­tu­nity to give myself a lit­tle cre­ative chal­lenge. Read more:

I love farro for its tex­ture, specif­i­cally the nut­ti­ness it adds to a dish, but I don’t love it for its price tag. It’s also not exactly gluten-​​free, so it has become an ingre­di­ent that I enjoy once in a blue moon when the mood really strikes. Well, the other night the mood struck. As I was walk­ing through the isles of my local mar­ket with arugula in my bas­ket, crav­ing some­thing refresh­ing for din­ner, I hap­pened to notice a bag of farro on the shelf. It’s rare that my local mar­ket has this delec­table grain in stock, so after a bit of brain churn­ing, and a lit­tle drool­ing over fresh herbs that I spot­ted in a nearby isle, I tossed the farro into my bas­ket. Read more:

My absolute favorite meals are those made on the fly with left­over ingre­di­ents in my refrig­er­a­tor. This week I just so hap­pened to have a lot of left­over food and it some­how all mag­i­cally meshed well together. Don’t ask why, but I had an insane amount of feta cheese sit­ting in my refrig­er­a­tor so with that in mind, I entered my kitchen and with the food before me, I started to sali­vate over the idea of mak­ing some kind of pesto. Read more:

I’ve been on a fig kick lately and what goes bet­ter with figs than cheese? Noth­ing. So, I decided to com­bine the two with my favorite green of late, arugula, and make some que­sadil­las in Ezekiel tor­tillas. I love the fla­vor and tex­ture of these tor­tillas (and all Food For Life prod­ucts for that mat­ter) and more impor­tantly, they are made from pure sprouted grains. This was an extremely sim­ple din­ner to make– all it requires is plac­ing tor­tillas on a bak­ing sheet lined with parch­ment paper, adding the top­pings, and bak­ing for 35 min­utes. Here’s how I put these guys together…

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The other night I had din­ner at West­ville in the East Vil­lage and ordered what is now my new sta­ple salad. I had for­got­ten how deli­cious some­thing as fresh as arugula, lemon, olive oil and parme­san is.  I ordered it with some grilled chicken and it was the per­fect no fuss, light but ful­fill­ing meal.  So per­fect, that I was inspired to make it for lunch the next day.  I knew this leafy green was good for you, but I wanted to do a lit­tle more research to find out exactly what was so great about arugula aside from its unique, slightly spicy fla­vor.
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I had some bar­ley left over from last week’s savory pump­kin and goat cheese dish so tonight I decided to go the oppo­site direc­tion and use it in a refresh­ing salad.  I still have yet to mas­ter cook­ing the bar­ley itself, but the rest of this dish was so sim­ple to toss together.

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