Sprout & Pea

In the sum­mer I crave Mex­i­can food and in the win­ter I can­not get enough Thai food. Specif­i­cally, this win­ter. My co-​​workers and I have got­ten into a bad habit of order­ing thai food for lunch on cold, rainy and snowy days and I have got­ten into the bad habit of order­ing it for din­ner on lazy evenings. I decided it was time to stop wast­ing money and stop eat­ing food with mys­tery ingre­di­ents, so the other night I attempted home­made pad thai. Read more:

I had a crav­ing for brus­sels sprouts but I didn’t want to just sauté them with shal­lots and lemon as I often do. I was rack­ing my brain for inspi­ra­tion when my eyes landed on a bunch of fresh cilantro sit­ting to the left of the brus­sels sprouts at my local mar­ket. To the right were some scal­lions. With a the addi­tion of a lit­tle lime, this was exactly the kind of refresh­ing dish I was in the mood for, so I decided to throw some quinoa into the mix to make it a proper meal. Read more:

Another unfa­mil­iar item arrived in my CSA box last week. When I opened our box of excit­ing new dis­cov­er­ies, I was greeted with a green that looked some­thing like cilantro meets arugula. I took a bite of a leaf and was met with a fla­vor sim­i­lar to arugula but much milder. Our accom­pa­ny­ing list of items told me that I was chew­ing on some­thing called mizuna. 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:

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 had a ton of scal­lions left­over from my break­fast the other morn­ing so I spent much of my day today brows­ing my favorite food porn sites for ideas on what to do with them. By the end of the day, I was crav­ing a veggie-​​full meal and thought I would just roast them with some other root veg­eta­bles and call it a night. That’s when I had the idea to put a lit­tle cre­ative pre­sen­ta­tion spin on one of my favorite dishes, roasted root veg­eta­bles with Greek yogurt. Read more: