Salads
Beets and Cukes in Miso Dressing with Pickled Ginger
I love beets. Their sweet, earthy essence seems to scare some people away, but not me. I do find it frustrating that the only way that beets are served in restaurants these days is in a salad with feta, chevre, or bleu. The sweetness of the beets is a perfect foil for...
Sesame Turmeric Dressing Prep Makes the Week Easy
It's all about that Prep If you want to eat well, you have to meal prep. One of the most basic meal components to prep is your salad dressing. It's sooo quick to make, and sooo much better than the store-bought stuff. If you've been known to buy salad greens, only to...
Get to the Farmers Market and Make a Potato and Green Bean Salad
It's potato salad season, in all its glory. Tender young, locally grown potatoes are at my Farmer's Market, along with a bounty of fresh, seasonal veggies that can make a potato salad a little more exciting than the standard one. Take my Potato and Green Bean Salad...
Make Blue Potato Salad with Chive Blossoms for a Quick and Colorful Meal
Does it seem that I'm obsessed with blue food? Purple sweet potatoes, purple corn and purple barley have made frequent cameos here on the blog, in all their chromatic glory. Blue Potato Salad is just the latest. I suppose my eye is drawn to the exotic, as I traipse...
Cross-Pollinating Ideas at the Grain Gathering
Some people take time off at the end of July to visit a white sand beach. But there's no barley at the beach. Instead, at 3;45 am, I found myself driving in darkness, about an hour North of Seattle, navigating country roads to get to an experimental grain field before...
Try a Sweet, Tender Hakurei Turnip in Salad, Fall in Love
Turnips never make the list of sexy vegetables. I haven't yet heard that turnips will be the "new kale," but who knows, maybe the fruity crunch of Hakurei Turnips will change all that. Unlike the usual purple tinged, pink, or just kind of rough looking over-wintered...
Get to Know a Rambutan from a Mangosteen, with Asian Fruit Salad
Are you bored with berries? Maybe apples make you yawn, and a slice of watermelon fills you with overwhelming ennui? You need to step out on your usual fruit loves and try something new. Might I suggest a trip to your local Asian market to seek out some exotic Asian...
Tasting Minnesota with Betsy Nelson, A Curated Collection in a Cookbook
When you try to answer a question like "What is Minnesota food?" you can make yourself crazy, just trying to sort out where Minnesota cuisine begins and ends. Is it the food of the first wave of immigrants, or the tenth, or do you include the latest? Well, leave it...
Celebrate Stress Awareness Month with Pesto Kale Salad
Did you know that April is Stress Awareness Month? (Stressed Inner voice: HOW DID IT SLIP BY ME!?!?! I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN!) Yes, it's a whole month in which we should take a deep breath, stop beating ourselves up for not knowing that it's stress awareness month, and...
Spring Radishes Star in Mexican Jicama and Orange Salad
Craving something light and Springy? These days I'm all about crunch, and tangy citrus flavors that seem to taste of the sunshine. The winter doldrums are lifting, and all the energy is flowing again. It's amazing how you learn to live in darkness and cold, only to...
Astonishing Apples and Applepanzanella
So many fruits are divas, temperamental and finicky. Is that peach ripe, or will I cut into it and find it spongy? Is that mango ever going to ripen, or just turn from rock-hard to mushy overnight? Not the apple. Buy a whole bag, put them in the drawer in the fridge,...
My New Book, The Whole Grain Promise is Here!
I'm so proud to announce that my seventh book, The Whole Grain Promise, More Than 100 Delicious Recipes To Jumpstart a Healthier Diet (Running Press, $19.95), hits bookstore shelves on October 6. If you haven't noticed, whole grains are at the core of my cooking. I...
Summery Peach and Sweetcorn Salad with Basil, Welcome August
It's officially sweetcorn season, a time of year when by vegetable drawer is packed with a dozen plump ears every time I visit the farmers market. 12 ears of corn, two people, you do the math. We go on a bit of a corn binge. It's an annual bacchanal of corn love....
Smoked New Potato and Heirloom Tomato Salad
Last week, I posted a recipe for smoked oyster mushrooms and bruschetta, inspired by the mushrooms that I found at the farmer's market. Well, my market bonanza was not limited to amazing mushrooms, not by a long shot. I also scored some tiny new potatoes. These babies...
Miyoko Schinner, Queen of Vegan Cheese, and Now The Homemade Vegan Pantry
Miyoko Schinner is both a grande dame and a hot new face on the vegan scene. She is the author of one of the first wave of vegan cookbooks, the Now and Zen Epicure, which she put out in 1990. That book is out of print, although a revised new version did come...
Cress, Asparagus and Mango Salad with Chia
It's almost, almost asparagus season in Minnesota, so I just had to jump when this gorgeous purple asparagus appeared at the Coop. It was teasing me with a preview of the spears certain to arrive in the coming weeks, freshly cut, from our local farms. I figured I...
Cauliflower Tabouli, Vegetables Masquerading as Grains
First things first. I love bulghar. Bulgur, bulgar, how ever you want to spell it. Whole grains are the base of the pyramid, and fantastically tasty, too. But sometimes, you need a vegetable side that has just a bit more panache. That, to me, is where cauliflower that...
Simply Vegetarian Thai Cooking by Nancie McDermott
Vegetarians and Thai food are a match made in heaven. Thai food is a go-to for the meatless crowd, because it is so packed with flavors and textures that don't rely on animal foods. Rich coconut milk, tangy lime, lemongrass and tamarind, tongue tingling ginger,...
Perfect Pears Make a Simple Salad, Can You Spot a Perfect Pear?
One of the great benefits of shopping in a Coop that seeks out great local produce is the moment when I find a new variety of a favorite food. This week, as I was pondering the pear selections, I was delighted to see a whole display of Harrow Sweet Pears. They were a...
You Can Eat Corn Raw? Minty Raw Corn Salad with Green Goddess Dressing
Last week I did a fun appearance on Twin Cities Live, where I made some summery sweet corn dishes. At one point in the show, I said that the sweet corn right now is so fresh and sweet that you can just eat it raw. The show's host was surprised. Of course, most people...
Thai Tomato Salad, Celebrating My Homegrown Harvest
In Minnesota, we plant our tomatoes, then we wait. It's been a hard year in the garden, but the tomato plants seemed to really like the fact that it rained for the entire month of June, and a good part of July. The ten thousand lakes and creeks and rivers all jumped...
Jill Nussinow, The Veggie Queen Brings You the Nutrition CHAMPS
So you say you want to eat more veggies? Well, maybe you should get to know the Veggie Queen. Meet Jill Nussinow, the vegan chef who tirelessly champions the joys of eating plants. I've mentioned Jill before. I blogged and cooked a delicious dish from her last book,...
Roasted Rhubarb and Wild Rice Salad, Sweet and Savory Spring!
Oh, my Garden. It's emotionally intense, compared to gardens I had in Illinois. The beginning is fraught with peril, as I watch weather reports for hard freezes and frosts, trying to time my plantings for the earliest possible moment. I have to be ready to jump in...
Massage Those Collard Greens for a Terrific Winter Waldorf Salad
It's always darkest before the dawn, or maybe "it's always whitest before the thaw" is more appropriate. Yes, I'm talking about Winter, just a little. Locked in the house, it's easy to fall into eating lots of comforting carbs. So we have to make sure that we are...
My Holiday Persimmon Salad
For such a beautiful little fruit, the persimmon kind of reminds me of a little orange bomb. Cut into it too soon and you will be rewarded with a bite of something so tannic and tart that you will not be able to eat it. Wait for it's little inner timer to reach the...
Brussels Sprouts, More Than a Baby Cabbage
I made the trek to my wintry Farmer's Market on Saturday, where there was still a surprising wealth of produce. My teeth were chattering as I fumbled with my money with my blue fingers, speed shopping to get out of the cold. Then, I spied a quintessential Fall...
Magical Instant Umami, The Next Big Ingredient
Sounds like a grand claim, doesn't it. I'm going out on a limb, predicting that once chefs and trend setters get their hands on this hard-to-find ingredient, they are going to be slapping it on everything. Remember when wasabi and edamame were unheard of, then...
Chasing Plenty in London, at The Ottolenghi Empire
Like many Americans, I was introduced to Yotam Ottolenghi by the rave reviews of his restaurants in London, which were so exciting that American magazines and newspapers splashed brilliantly colored photos of his food across their pages. Then he released his book,...
Packable Salads in Jars, Perfect for Summer
I have to say, I was a little late to this food in jars phenomenon. Sure, I used to can and still have cases of mason jars in my basement, awaiting the return of my DIY canning impulses. I keep a rotating stash of quart mason jars for my fresh juices, smoothies-to-go,...
It’s Almost Veg Pledge Week, Go Meatless with My Freekeh-Radish Salad!
By now you have heard of Meatless Mondays, a growing movement in which people give up meat just one day a week. Well, that turns out to be really easy, and effective, too. When a million people opt for beans over beef, that means that thousands of pounds of...