Sprout & Pea

Wel­come to the start of my twelve plus weeks of one handed meals. Turns out, my lit­tle bike acci­dent resulted in me in a hand splint and the pos­si­bil­ity of surgery. Cross­ing fin­gers that the lat­ter is not nec­es­sary. When I heard this news, my first thought was– I’m not going to let this hold me back in the kitchen. Then, I tried to open a can of can­nellini beans. I was only par­tially defeated, get­ting the can halfway open with the use of a can opener, a knife, a spoon and my armpit. But after a good twenty min­utes, I got those beans into the food proces­sor and made myself some deli­cious bean purée. That was when I decided to take this lit­tle set back as an oppor­tu­nity to get cre­ative, and to invest in an elec­tric can opener. And so I present to you, my first install­ment of one handed meals. Read more:

There’s been a wel­come fall chill in the air recently, and it seems that sum­mer may soon be com­ing to an end, but my crav­ings for Mex­i­can food cer­tainly are not. This sum­mer, more than ever, I have been dream­ing of the tangy, spicy cui­sine day and night, and seem to have an undy­ing han­ker­ing for Micheladas. Instead of eat­ing out at my favorite neigh­bor­hood spot the other night, I decided to take on this crav­ing and cook a healthy meal in the form of my take on Mex­i­can quinoa. Read more:

Ever since I made pis­ta­chio roasted aspara­gus, I’ve been crav­ing that slightly sweet, savory and uniquely tex­tured com­bi­na­tion. I’ve eaten it on its own, and placed it over a tor­tilla and topped it with a fried egg, so this week­end I thought — why not mix it into one of my favorite grains — quinoa. So, Sat­ur­day night I did just that. Read more:

I had never thought about mak­ing quinoa for break­fast, until I came across Heidi Swanson’s recipe on 101 Cook­books. The thought of it made me feel all warm and cozy inside so I of course decided to make it for…err…dinner. Franky, I couldn’t wait until break­fast to taste this. I made enough to have left­overs for break­fast the next few days though and I’m cer­tainly glad I did!
Read more:

Quinoa has become one of my favorite meals over the past year, so I am con­stantly try­ing to think up new ways to pre­pare this won­der­ful super­food. I had pur­chased a large pack­age of com­pari toma­toes about a week ago that I never got around to using so I thought I would make use of them before they went bad and roast them with some gar­lic and olive oil (deli­cious on their own).

Read more:

I’ve had a lull in cook­ing inspi­ra­tion the past few days, per­haps because I was dis­tracted by all of the Hal­loween fes­tiv­i­ties going on around me.  I didn’t even cook any­thing with pump­kin this week­end (but I did put together a great cos­tume)! Tonight, how­ever, my cook­ing fever came back and along with it came my new favorite dish.
Read more: