Sprout & Pea

As excited as I was to roast my first leg of lamb the other night, I still wanted to eat my veg­gies. We received an adorable baby acorn squash with our CSA and still had a but­ter­nut squash lay­ing around from a pre­vi­ous veg­gie box so we roasted them both and decided to make a nice mash as a side for our lamb. Since the cashew cream worked so nicely in the vegan risotto I recently made, I decided to try adding it to this mash in place of but­ter. I always love the fla­vor of car­damom in the win­ter and thought it would go nicely with the orange fla­vor in the lamb so I mixed some into the squash along with some honey and mashed it all together. Read more:

After a win­ter of very heavy meals and far too much eat­ing out, I am look­ing for­ward to a cre­ative sum­mer in my kitchen. With the cool tem­per­a­tures drag­ging on, I’ve been in a bit of an inspi­ra­tion lull over the past few months, but that all changed last night when my first CSA deliv­ery from Lan­caster Farms arrived.  This is my first time join­ing a CSA. My reser­va­tions have always lied in the excess of food that would come along with a weekly deliv­ery that feeds a fam­ily of four. So, when two of my friends showed their inter­est in split­ting a half share and we cal­cu­lated the cost to work out to about $3 per week for each of us, all of my hes­i­ta­tion went out the win­dow and we signed up that day. Read more:

After a glute­nous Passover Seder a few weeks ago, my body needed to reboot with some­thing light and refresh­ing, but of course I had plans to attend another giant feast the fol­low­ing day at my friend’s Easter Brunch. So I took it upon myself to bring along a dish that was a bit on the health­ier side– car­rot, gin­ger and scal­lion salad. I had never made this before but it’s a snack that I often pick up from the Whole Foods salad bar (for entirely too much money). Rather than look­ing up a recipe, I grabbed the main ingre­di­ents and impro­vised on a dress­ing. Read more:

 You know those days where every­thing in your tiny lit­tle world seems to stand still for just long enough to take it all in? Those days where you just feel grate­ful for it all? Sat­ur­day was one of those days for me, and it was a sim­ple day too. I woke up, met my cousin for brunch and we enjoyed some deli­cious poached eggs with herbs and cheese out­side on a rare 60 degree day in Brook­lyn. We caught up, walked around, did a lit­tle shop­ping, and explored neigh­bor­hoods by foot. On our walk, I received a phone call from one of my most favorite peo­ple– just to say hello and that he was think­ing of me as he biked around where the wind took him on this unbe­liev­ably beau­ti­ful day. Read more:

It may be a lit­tle bit early for Thanks­giv­ing, but tonight I decided to get into the spirit of the hol­i­day and make some stuff­ing. I was inspired by a new favorite drink that I’ve been enjoy­ing recently at a local restau­rant — a car­damom honey cap­puc­cino. I thought about mak­ing my own car­damom honey cap­puc­cino this morn­ing, but set­tled on tea instead and after that, the thought of car­damom was in the back of my mind and taste buds all day. When night­time came around, I had the sud­den idea to try mak­ing car­damom and honey stuff­ing. Read more:

I’m kick­ing off my first $5 chal­lenge meal with a dish that’s per­fect for both break­fast and din­ner. It also shares a name with my favorite sea­son that is just upon us– red flan­nel sea­son, or as most peo­ple like to call it, autumn. I was first intro­duced to the red flan­nel hash at a favorite local brunch spot and since first order­ing it, I have had a dif­fi­cult time ever order­ing any­thing else. It just hits that sweet and savory spot so well. I’ve been want­ing to recre­ate this myself  for quite some time so when I was crav­ing beets at the end of my work day, this imme­di­ately popped into my mind. I knew it would be a cheap din­ner, but I did not real­ize that I could make this for well under $5. Here’s the cost break­down: Read more: