Sprout & Pea

Until a few days ago, hazel­nuts were rather for­eign to me. It’s a nut that for one rea­son or another, I have never exper­i­mented with in the kitchen. That all changed when I was prepar­ing a rather bland salad at work and was kindly offered some of the pro­tein packed nuts to help liven up my greens. I was amazed at how much they enhanced my bor­ing lunch in fla­vor and tex­ture and how sat­is­fied I felt from a light meal. So on my way home that night, I picked some up and started toss­ing around ideas of how I might incor­po­rate them into my dinner.

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:

It hap­pened again. Another sup­per club left me with a plethora of goat cheese in my refrig­er­a­tor. One would think that I would learn to stop over­es­ti­mat­ing by now, but I can’t help but always air on the side of safe rather than cheese­less. So I once again found myself star­ing at the ingre­di­ents in my kitchen, try­ing to come up with a meal to toss the rest of this tangy deli­cious fro­mage into. Read more:

When my mom and I hand made quinoa ravi­oli a few weeks ago, I wanted to top it with some­thing light to let the home­made fla­vors and tex­tures shine. So, we decided to make a lit­tle sage, shal­lot and but­ter sauce. Unfor­tu­nately, not used to the elec­tric stove that my mom has at home, I wound up burn­ing the shal­lots a bit, but I still enjoyed the slightly crisp, deli­cious taste. The fla­vors screamed win­ter and I wanted to try mak­ing this sauce again when I returned home to 32 degree Brook­lyn. Read more:

As we all can attest, the cli­mate has reached extreme lev­els of unpre­dictabil­ity. So when you find your­self in a t-​​shirt on a 60 degree day in the mid­dle of win­ter, you take the longer walk to work, enjoy the sun­shine and go with it. It’s also a per­fect excuse to enjoy a sum­mer meal one last time before the real cold hits, and this past Mon­day I did just that. Read more:

Some­times you just can’t eat enough of your favorite food. For me, that’s goat cheese (or any cheese for that mat­ter). This is why I decided to take advan­tage of the giant log of the tangy, smooth and crumbly white fro­mage that I had left­over from my Sat­ur­day morn­ing break­fast. It was Sun­day night, and I wasn’t about to go out to the mar­ket and pur­chase gro­ceries for an end of the week­end din­ner, so I decided to make do with what I had around. Read more: