Sprout & Pea

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:

A few weeks ago I had an incred­i­ble vegan meal at a lit­tle spot right around the cor­ner from my old stomp­ing grounds in the West Vil­lage. I was equally excited to be din­ing in the old hood as I was to be shar­ing a meal with some of my favorite peo­ple. The deli­cious food was a bonus and served as a lit­tle inspi­ra­tion in my own kitchen. My friend had raved about Blos­som for some time so I decided it was finally time to see what all of the fuss was about. Among a table of unique cock­tails, pizza that you would never know was vegan, and many other knock your socks off dishes, stood my favorite plate of the night — their vegan risotto. A few weeks later, I decided it was time to attempt mak­ing the vegan risotto myself. Read more:

The weather has been all over the place lately and with that, so have my eat­ing habits. It seems that this warm one day, freez­ing the next pat­tern also seems to send me into a pat­tern of home-​​cooked healthy meal one day, mac and cheese at my favorite local spot the next. On one such recent warm day, my body had had enough of eat­ing out, so when I awoke to the sun shin­ing, I imme­di­ately jumped from my bed and headed to the mar­ket for some break­fast inspi­ra­tion. Low and behold I cam across a veg­etable that I have been itch­ing to play with. Read more:

Impro­vised meals with left­over ingre­di­ents in my refrig­er­a­tor often wind up being the most fun to cook. I sup­pose it’s due to the ele­ment of sur­prise that comes from toss­ing ingre­di­ents together and hop­ing for the best. And when the dish comes out tast­ing deli­cious, it’s a reward­ing reas­sur­ance that maybe I do know what I’m doing in the kitchen. So, with red chard left­over from my tacos, I rum­maged through my kitchen and decided on a gar­lic and chard pasta. Read more:

It’s always a treat to have my vegan friends join me for din­ner because it presents an oppor­tu­nity for me to get even more cre­ative than usual in my kitchen. Of course there are a many quick, sim­ple vegan dishes that I could have pre­pared when my friend came over last week, but the prob­lem was that I was crav­ing some­thing warm, savory and creamy. I’m not a fan of fake cheese or meat so I was stumped for a moment. Then I came across quite pos­si­bly the most per­fect solu­tion– but­ter bean sage sauce. Read more:

When we’re not hav­ing fleet­ing days of sum­mer weather, it cer­tainly feels like fall has arrived, and I’m enjoy­ing every minute of it. The cozy sweaters, the nights snug­gled up with your loved ones enjoy­ing a glass of wine, the din­ner par­ties galor. The one thing that most sig­ni­fies fall to me is food. That tran­si­tion into hol­i­day spices and warm meals is one that com­forts me to no end. After mak­ing an impro­vi­sa­tional stuff­ing with car­damom, orange zest, gin­ger and honey, I found myself days later still crav­ing the taste and aroma of car­damom. Read more: