For years I’ve been talking about making Thanksgiving – I love the food and I felt this was a holiday I could someday own. It’s a bit complicated given the family traditions, but I couldn’t wait to tackle it when I finally got my chance this year.

Not to be overly critical (forget it, let’s face it, I am), but I was convinced I could do it better. I always appreciate when someone makes the effort of entertaining, but we’re talking Thanksgiving here. Sure, the Fourth of July can be potluck and the high holidays are all about tradition, but not Thanksgiving – it’s a holiday about giving thanks, good food, and giving thanks for good food (and football for some people, too). In my world, there’s no place for Chardonnay and turkey that was cooked, sliced, frozen and then reheated (and we found the critical).

So about two months ago I found out that our yearly tradition of going to Florida was turned on it’s head and I declared that this was going to be my year. I was going to make Thanksgiving, I was going to do it my way, and my family was going to like it. Damn it!

(Only hold a knife like this when posing)

I spent weeks planning the menu, researching recipes and techniques I hadn’t used in years, practicing the brine solution on a chicken, and creating a Thanksgiving run of show until I finally came up with what I thought was a worthy, executable menu. We kept a few family staples that I delegated to my mom (green bean casserole and her Jello-mold, because it wouldn’t be a holiday without her Jello), and I took on the rest.

There was the apple cider-brined turkey with sage-thyme butter and gravy made from sherry, reduced apple cider and homemade turkey stock. There were these delectably rich dinner rolls served with honey butter, and roasted sweet potatoes because it turns out I’m not the only one who can’t stand candied yams. There was stuffing, which was the one thing that needs some work before next year, although my brother-in-law couldn’t seem to get enough.

I skipped the desserts as my energy was focused on creating my ultimate turkey, and delegated those to family members. They picked their favorites and we wound up with a delicious dark chocolate cake from my mom and adorable chocolate turkey’s made out of Oreo’s, Whoppers, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and a bunch of other candy from my sister. We had quite the assembly line going, but they turned out well – next year we’re going to use them as part of the table decoration.

Speaking of, we had some fun with the table, too, decorating with mini pumpkins, autumn flowers in Ball jars, and votive candles set in jars with cranberries. It was festive, fun and delicious, and hopefully the start of a new tradition my niece will cherish.

This isn’t to say there weren’t issues, like when my mom threw out the giblets I needed for the gravy or when I tried to heat up the cranberry sauce in a glass container and it cracked. Oops.

And throughout all of it, I truly did (and do) give thanks for my wonderful family who accepts me for who I am and goes with me on my crazy whims. And for my wonderful new niece who lights up the room every time.

I know, I know… this blog has been active for four-plus years and there are no pancake recipes! Seriously it’s a little embarrassing, which is why I’m excited to share this one today.

The truth is I’m a single gal so the idea of making a big breakfast fit for a family doesn’t normally occur to me. But this morning I woke up craving pancakes. Like, I HAD to have them. So I did, and they were delicious!

I worked with what I had on hand and wasn’t disappointed, even though that meant using unsweetened almond milk with a squeeze of lemon juice in place of milk, buttermilk or even yogurt that you traditionally find in pancakes. And the truth was – it didn’t make a difference!

These pancakes were perfect – fluffy interior with a nice crispy edges. They were hearty and sweet with fresh blueberries and an amazing maple syrup I’ve become obsessed with from Burton’s Maplewood Farm (if you’re in Chicago, they sometimes sell at Green City Market). I also included rolled oats, a trick I learned when helping with a Top Chef cooking event a few years ago.

This recipe makes enough for two, although as long as I’m telling the truth here, I’ll admit that I ate ‘em all.

Here’s the recipe:

Blueberry Pancakes – serves 2 (makes about six 4-inch pancakes)

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

1 tablespoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup unsweetened almond milk or regular milk

1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

1 egg

1 tablespoon melted unsalted butter, plus more for cooking (I like to melt the butter in the pan I’m going to use for the pancakes so that it’s already greased)

2/3 cup fresh blueberries

Maple syrup

Combine the flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in medium bowl.

In a small bowl whisk together the milk, lemon juice, egg and melted butter. Pour the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients and stir gently with a wooden spoon or spatula until just combined (lumps are good!). Let sit for 10 minutes. Stir in the blueberries just before cooking.

Heat a small pat of butter (about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon for three pancakes) in a saute pan or griddle over medium heat. Add 1/4 cup pancake batter to the pan and cook until the bottom is crisp, the edges are golden and there are bubbles showing on the uncooked side of the pancake, about 3 minutes. Use a flat spatula to flip the pancakes and cook on the other side until crisp, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from the pan and serve with maple syrup.

Spinach & Pesto Wheatberry Salad

Today was my first day back in the kitchen after a two-week accidental cooking hiatus. It wasn’t that I was purposely trying not to cook, just that I haven’t really been home. And I have to say, picking up my chef’s knife felt great.

One of the dishes I made was a long time coming. The inspiration of making a spinach and pesto salad stemmed from one I’d had at Protein Bar a few weeks back (Protein Bar is a fairly new fast food chain in Chicago and a brilliant concept at that). That dish came with quinoa, but I wanted to change it up a bit to incorporate a different whole grain I haven’t used before – wheat berries.

I started by cooking the wheat berries (which I got for about 65 cents from the bulk foods section at Whole Foods), then moved on to the pesto, which was a bit different from a traditional basil pesto. While it does include basil, I also added spinach and arugula to give it a light and super fresh taste, which went wonderfully with the slightly earthy taste of the wheat berries. When the wheat berries were done, I mixed in the pesto, a handful of baby spinach, quartered cherry tomatoes and toasted pine nuts to round out the dish. You can also easily bulk this up into a main dish by adding chicken, which is exactly what I’m going to do for lunch tomorrow.

So, about those wheat berries: 1) They come in different varieties, but for this recipe look for hard red winter wheat berries if available; 2) A general ratio for cooking wheat berries is 1:3 (1 cup wheat berries to 3 cups water), but if there’s water leftover at the end simply drain the wheat berries through a strainer; 3) The cooked texture should be chewy but not too firm; 4) Wheat berries are a whole grain – you can read about why they’re good for you here.

Here’s the recipe. Give wheat berries a try and tell me what you think.

Spinach & Pesto Wheatberry Salad

Makes four side dish servings

Wheat Berries

3 cups water

1 cup hard red winter wheat berries, rinsed

1/2 teaspoon salt

Pesto

1 cup baby spinach

1/2 cup arugula

1/2 cup fresh basil leaves

2 tablespoons pine nuts

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2-3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

Mix-Ins

1/2 cup quartered cherry tomatoes

1/2 cup baby spinach

1 tablespoon toasted pine nuts

Cooked chicken breast (optional)

To cook the wheat berries, combine water, wheat berries, and salt in a pot and bring to a boil. Decrease the heat to low and simmer covered until wheat berries are chewy, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Make the pesto by combining the spinach, arugula, basil and pine nuts in a food processor. Slowly add the olive oil and lemon juice and pulse until well-combined; use a spatula to scrape down the sides every few pulses. Add the Parmesan cheese to taste.

Combine the warm wheat berries with 1/4 cup of the pesto or to taste (you’ll probably have a little leftover, which can easily be frozen). Stir in the cherry tomatoes, spinach, pine nuts and chicken if desired. Serve warm or at room temperature.

I first heard about these brownies a few weeks ago when a very pregnant Jessica Simpson raved about them on The Tonight Show. She talked about how these decadent brownies were, like, the best thing ever. Slutty Brownies are essentially a layer of chocolate chip cookie dough topped with Oreos (I used double-stuffed) topped with brownie batter, and then it’s all baked together.

And why are they called “Slutty” brownies? She said it was because of how rich and over-the-top they are, and probably because you feel a little naughty after eating one, but I’d rather call them Poncho Brownies because after I eat one, all I wanted to do is cover up. But damn, they really are worth it.

You’ll find a ton of recipes and interpretations of Slutty Brownies if you Google it, and most call for using store-bought cookie dough and brownie mix. This is totally fine, but me being me I like to make it all myself. Well, not the Oreos, but the rest. You get the point.

The recipes I used were the standard Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe (a classic and always a hit) and a standard chocolate brownie recipe from Gourmet Magazine/Epicurious that I halved.

This was actually my second attempt at making Slutty Brownies – the first was a comedy of errors with everything that could go wrong actually going wrong (I used pan that was too small so the batter never baked, somehow punctured a hole in the bottom of the aluminum baking pan and would up with a major spill and smoke billowing from the oven, and I slightly burned by finger). With a new brownie recipe, bigger pan and a calm head, this time things turned out much better.

Here’s the recipe:

Slutty Brownies – makes 20-24 brownies

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Batter – I used Nestle Toll House’s classic recipe

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 large eggs, at room temperature

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups (12 oz bag) semi-sweet chocolate chips

Oreo Layer

1 bag double-stuffed Oreos

Brownies – I used this recipe from Epicurious, which is halved below

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into pieces

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

3 large eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons cake flour

1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a 13×9 inch baking pan with foil to create a sling and coat with non-stick cooking spray. Set aside.

To make the cookie batter: Begin by combining the butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar in bowl. Beat until fluffy, about three minutes. Beat in the vanilla. Add the eggs one-at-a-time, beating well after each.

Combine the flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl. Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and beat until just combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Transfer the cookie dough to the prepared pan and use your hands to press into an even layer. Top with an even layer of Oreo cookies.

To make the brownie batter: Set a small pot with about 1 1/2 inches of water over medium-low heat and bring to a simmer. Combine the butter and chocolate in a medium heat-proof bowl and place it over the pot. Whisk until the chocolate and butter is smooth and melted. Remove the bowl from over the pot and whisk in the eggs one-at-a-time.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour and cocoa powder. Whisk it into the melted chocolate mixture in two batches, followed by the sugar and salt.

Pour the brownie batter over the Oreos and use a spatula to create an even layer.

Bake at 350°F for 55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with a few brownie crumbs.

Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then carefully lift the foil sling out of the pan and set on a cooling rack. Let cool at least 10 minutes longer before cutting into squares. Serve warm if desired.

Vegan creamed kale is delicious! Huh? Say what?

Yup, that was my reaction when a co-worker excitedly told me about this pre-packaged dish she had bought at Whole Foods. Now I do love me some greens but I was a little confused by the concept of something being both vegan and creamed – I mean, that statement alone is more than a little contradictory – but also intrigued. I had to try this for myself.

Fast forward a week and I found myself at Whole Foods where I tracked down this product in the refrigerated section. I took it home, heated it up and had to agree – this kale, miso, onion and cashew concoction was amazing. A quick search of the Whole Foods website and I found the recipe, or at least one similar to it.

Today I finally made the recipe for myself and had to share it with you. It’s really quite simple – simmer a chopped onion in vegetable broth, purée it with all the other ingredients except the kale, then simmer the kale in the blended mixture until tender. I made very few changes to the original recipe (swapped the amounts for vegetable broth and soy milk, which was almond milk, and set aside a spoonful of onions before pureeing to add texture to the final dish).

Definitely give this a try next time you’re up for something hearty, nutritious, interesting and really tasty.

Here’s the recipe with my changes, or check out the original here.

Vegan Creamed Kale, adapted from Whole Foods
Serves 4

1 cup low-sodium vegetable broth, divided
1 white onion, chopped into small pieces
1/2 cup unsweetened almond or soy milk
1/4 cup raw cashews
1 teaspoon mellow white miso
Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
Pinch red pepper flakes
4 cups packed chopped kale (2 bunches)
Pinch salt

Heat 1/2 cup of the vegetable broth in a sauté pan over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and cook, stirring often, until tender, about 8 minutes (most of the broth will reduce). Cool slightly; set aside 1/4 cup of the onions.

Pulse cashews in a food processor until it forms a paste. Add the majority of the cooked onions and pulse until well-combined. Slowly add the remaining broth and almond milk, miso, nutmeg and red pepper, and process until well-combined and mostly smooth.

Transfer the mixture back to the sauté pan and set heat to medium-low. Add the chopped kale and mix well. Cover and cook until the kale is tender, stirring often to prevent the sauce from burning, about 10 minutes. Season to taste.

I know I’ve posted my fair share of soups and stews over the past few years, but it’s for a good reason – I love cooking these types of foods! Along with sauces, soups are fun. You can change the flavors as you go – add a bit more of this, a dash of that. It’s the type of cooking that allows you to be truly creative and experimental. It’s just fun. Well, that and delicious.

My latest is a new turkey chili recipe that I made a few times this winter. It’s really simple – I mean, half the ingredients come from cans – but has tremendous flavor that you can make as strong or as mild as you like. The main spices in this version are garlic, cumin, curry powder and smoked Paprika, but the overall flavor is actually a little on the sweeter side which comes from the vegetables – onion, carrot and red pepper. Oh, and did I mention that I top it with avocado? Seriously this is a keeper.

If you like your chili to be spicier, definitely kick up the paprika or use a spicier chili powder (I personally like the smoked flavor of the Hungarian smoked paprika). Here’s the recipe.

Turkey Chili with Avocado – makes six servings

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 large onion, peeled and diced

1 large carrot, peeled and diced (about 1/3 cup diced)

2 small or 1 large red bell pepper, seeded and diced

6 to 8 cloves garlic, minced

16 oz ground turkey breast (if available at your meat counter, buy 8 oz each ground turkey breast and ground dark turkey meat)

28 oz can peeled tomatoes or ground crushed tomatoes

8 oz can tomato sauce

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon curry powder

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/2 teaspoon smoked Hungarian paprika

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1 bay leaf

2 can pinto beans, rinsed and drained

1 avocado

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-low heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes to soften. Add the carrots and red pepper and cook for an additional 10 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook for 1 minute or until fragrant.

Increase the heat to medium and add the ground turkey. Cook until lightly browned, stirring often (about 5 to 8 minutes). Add the canned tomatoes, tomato sauce and spices and increase heat to high. Once the sauce comes to a boil, decrease the heat to low and simmer for 25 minutes.

Stir in the pinto beans and simmer an additional 10 minutes. Adjust seasonings to taste.

Serve hot topped with a few avocado slices.

Chocolate chip cookies are classic, something we all grew up eating and my family was no exception. They’re the cookie my mom would whip up for bake sales and make as a “cake” for my birthday parties with frosting. There was even a year in junior high when all I ate for lunch each day was a chocolate chip cookie and carton of chocolate milk (sorry, mom, that’s what I was really doing with my lunch money).

And don’t even get me started on chocolate chip cookie dough! I’d eat the individually frozen dough balls from Market Days right out of the freezer as an after school snack, and in high school my friends and I would share a roll of store-bought chocolate chip cookie dough and eat it with spoons.

While ubiquitous, to me chocolate chip cookies are also conventional. And although I wouldn’t call myself cutting edge in pretty much anything (I mean, come on, look at my shoes), I don’t usually make this cookie because there’s no challenge to it.

This takes me to a few years back when a recipe from The New York Times was making the rounds in the blogosphere. I wasn’t interested. After all, they’re just chocolate chip cookies, right?

Luckily, my friend Jenn paid attention and began making these cookies, which turned out to be absolutely freaking delicious. I’d even go so far as to call them a game-changer.

Whenever we’d talk about these cookies – and, oddly enough, they came up in conversation quite often – I always referred to this recipe as “aged chocolate chip cookies,” because that was really the trick, letting the batter rest (or age) in the fridge for 24 to 72 hours. But I never made them myself. They were her thing, not to mention waiting for the dough to age required patience and planning, two things that don’t really suit me.

I finally had a wake up call a few weeks ago after visiting Jenn in San Francisco. The first thing she gave me when I got off the BART was one of her aged chocolate chip cookies. It had been a while since I’d had one and I forgot just how freaking good these cookies were. That’s when I made the decision: I need to start making these myself – they’re just too good not to have on a regular basis. Or semi-regular basis, given this is the time of year for fruitless resolutions.

And did I mention these cookies are huge? But don’t try to make them smaller – it’s part of their charm. Also, the ingredients are kind of specific but once you have them, just think of all the cookies you can make!

So here’s my advice: make a batch. Freeze them for portion control. And then eat them whenever you need a delicious bite of comfort food or as a reward for making it through spin class. That’s my plan, anyways.

Happy New Year!

Chocolate Chip Cookies, from The New York Times, adapted from Jacques Torres

2 cups minus 2 Tablespoons cake flour (8 oz)

1 2/3 cup bread flour (8 oz)

1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter (10 oz), at room temperature

1 1/4 cup brown sugar

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar (8 0z)

2 large eggs, at room temperature

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 1/2 pounds bittersweet chocolate disks or chips

Sea salt

Sift the cake flour, bread flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a bowl; set aside.

In a large bowl or mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.

Add the eggs one at a time to the butter mixture, being sure to incorporate well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla.

In two batches and with the mixer on low, carefully but quickly add the flour to the butter,  mixing just enough to incorporate it. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Cover the dough with plastic and let sit in the fridge for 24 to 72 hours. Try to be patient.

To bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 350°F and line two baking sheets with a silicone pad or parchment paper.

Scoop the dough into pieces the size of a large golf ball or a lime (3 1/2 oz). Keep refrigerated until ready to put in the oven.

Bake six cookies at a time. Press each dough ball into a disc and turn any chips sticking out vertically to lay flat. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt.

Bake 18 to 20 minutes or until golden brown but still soft. Transfer the sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then place the cookies directly on the rack and cool to room temperature or eat warm.

I’ve only been eating eggs for about two years and I’m still super picky about them. Growing up, eggs didn’t appeal to me, although neither did breakfast in general. I still can’t eat when I first get up and have to consciously remind myself to eat when I get to work or I’ll be hangry by 10:30.

Anyways, one of my recent favorite egg dishes is an egg sandwich on focaccia bread that I sometimes buy at the farmers’ market. It’s hot, fresh, and made using veggies and eggs found at the market that morning.

Flash forward to yesterday afternoon and another Chicago rainstorm. I decided to bake bread to pass the time and settled on rosemary focaccia bread using the olive oil dough recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, and it was delicious (all you have to do is add fresh minced rosemary to the dough and bake on a cookie sheet at 425°F for 25 minutes). I’d already eaten about half of a loaf straight-up when I started thinking, I have got to find something else to do with this delicious bread. That was when I remembered the egg sandwich and got to work.

Between my CSA and a Saturday morning visit to Green City Market, I had a ton of veggies to choose from. I really just wanted a little bit of this and a little bit of that without it turning into something I’d have to eat everyday for the next week (you other single cooks out there know what I’m talking about), so that’s what I did! I used one piece of bacon, one fingerling potato, two mini bell peppers, two crimini mushrooms, 1 large leaf bok choy, and about half of a very small yellow squash.

I cooked up all those veggies in the bacon fat (I’m going through a bacon phase) and added a little salt and lemon juice, then removed half of the veggies to save for later – this recipe really made two servings.  All that was left was to add two eggs to the pan with the remaining veggies, scramble it all together until the eggs were cooked, and pile the mixture onto a piece of fresh rosemary focaccia sliced in half.

Simple. Delicious. No recipe required. Happy Sunday morning!

I’ve been receiving my CSA weekly for about a month now and it’s finally starting to contain more of a variety of ingredients. There are still a lot of greens (chard, kale, collard), but this week we got a few new items – leeks (so small they look like scallions), tomato (one), and a whole lot of zucchini.

I enjoy zucchini, we have a good history. When I started cooking for myself my senior year of college, zucchini was one of the first vegetables I took on – I’d cook it on the George Foreman Grill with chicken marinated in Italian dressing. The George has long been out of commission, but my fondness for this summer squash remains.

Seeing as I’ll probably get even more zucchini next week, today I decided to look at it as a challenge to see what I could do to use it all. If I’d had more time (and if I hadn’t run out of flour), I would have made another batch of zucchini muffins, so that will have to wait. But I did make Zucchini-Walnut Bread, Chocolate Chip Zucchini-Walnut Muffins, a Zucchini Frittata, and Stewed Zucchini with Tomatoes.

Many of the ideas came from the CSA newsletter, which I think is one of my favorite features (thanks Harvest Moon Farms). The Zucchini Bread recipe was a combination of the one from the newsletter and one my friend shared. They were so similar that I took the best of each and made it my own, including reserving 1/4 of the batter for the muffins with chocolate chips. And same with the Stewed Zucchini – the inspiration was from the newsletter, I just tweaked it based on what I had available. Finally, I made the Frittata because I had leftover shredded zucchini from the bread/muffins to use up; it was the perfect thing to make.

Here are the recipes I made today. If you have a great zucchini recipe, please share it – I know there’s more zucchini coming!

Zucchini-Walnut Bread – makes two loaves, or 1 large loaf and 6 muffins, or 24 muffins

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup walnuts

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

3 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

2 cups sugar

2 cups grated zucchini (from about 2 small zucchinis, leave skin on)

Chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease two loaf pans or line muffin tins. Set aside.

In a food processor fitted with the blade, combine the flour and walnuts. Process until the walnuts are chopped very fine and blended with the flour, about 1 minute. Transfer to a bowl.

Mix the flour and walnuts with the cinnamon, salt, baking soda, baking powder and nutmeg. Set aside.

Whisk the eggs in a large bowl until combined. Whisk in the oil, then the sugar.

Grate the zucchini by hand or using the grater attachment of the food processor. Stir the zucchini into the egg mixture.

Add one-third of the flour mixture to egg mixture and mix until just combined. Add the remaining flour mixture in thirds until well-incorporated. If desired, stir in the chocolate chips.

Spoon mixture into prepared loaf pan or muffin tins. Bake muffins 30 minutes, medium-sized loaves about 45 to 50 minutes, and a large loaf 55 minutes to 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Cool to room temperature and serve.

Zucchini Frittata – serves 2

1 tablespoon olive oil

3/4 cup shredded zucchini

1 large clove garlic, chopped

4 eggs, lightly beaten

Salt

Grated Parmesan cheese

Pre-heat the oven to 350°F.

Set a small non-stick saute pan over medium heat. Add the oil once the pan is hot. Sprinkle the shredded zucchini and garlic in the pan and cook about 2 minutes. Season with a generous pinch of salt.

Lightly whisk the eggs in a small bowl. Pour the eggs over the zucchini and stir once. Transfer the saute pan to the oven and cook until the eggs are set, about 6 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven. Using towels or oven mits, carefully set a plate upside-down over the pan. In one swift motion, flip the pan and plate over so the frittata is on the plate. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and enjoy!

Stewed Zucchini with Tomatoes – serves 4

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 small leek, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 very large or two medium zucchinis (I used a Zephyr squash), sliced into 1/4-inch thick rounds

1 tomato, seeds removed and roughly chopped

1/4 cup vegetable broth

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary

Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the leek and cook 1 minute. Stir in the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Add the zucchini to the pan and cook for 3 minutes, tossing every minute. Add the tomato and vegetable broth. Reduce heat to low and cover. Cook for 10 minutes or until the squash soft.

Season with salt and rosemary, or your herb or choice. Serve over brown rice.

As I briefly mentioned in my last post (otherwise known as the first post in months), I joined the Harvest Moon Farm CSA this year. For those of you not in the know – Mom, I’m talking to you – a CSA stands for community supported agriculture. Essentially, before the growing season even starts, you pay for a share in a farm’s crop, which for me comes to half a box of produce each week from mid-June until November. It’s uber convenient as the box gets delivered to my office building every Wednesday afternoon, and then I go to the farmers’ market on Saturday to supplement with produce that wasn’t in the box.

My weekly take is half a box because I’m splitting a share with a friend, who last week started a fire by microwaving fennel. That’s another story, but the point is that I might have to take the rest of the fennel this year even though I don’t like it because she just can’t be trusted.

I’ve been having fun experimenting with my CSA box and seeing what I can make out of it each week. Really, I’m enjoying the challenge of 1) using everything in my box, and 2) trying new veggies/new ways to prepare them. Often times I wind up focusing on just a few of the vegetables, then find myself with the rest starting to wilt on Monday night. This leads to a lot of last minute roasted veggie or stir-fry dishes that I take to work with quinoa. It’s good, but lacking a little creativity.

A few nights ago I focused on the collard greens, something I don’t eat often. I buy a lot of chard and kale, but usually stay away from the collards. Not sure why exactly, but I think maybe it’s because I had the impression it’s tougher than the other varieties.

That night I prepared the collard greens with delicious multi-colored carrots I’d picked up at the market along with bacon, garlic and lemon juice. That was pretty much it – super simple, very fresh and filling, and a great way to really taste and enjoy the collard greens. I was surprised to discover that they were more mild tasting than the others, which can sometimes be slightly bitter. I’m definitely a collard greens convert – bring ‘em on!

Here’s what I did, it’s really more of a guide than a straight-up recipe:

Carrots & Collards – serves 2 as a side dish

2 slices bacon, diced

1 cup diced carrots (I used 3 smallish carrots, each about 4-inches long)

4 garlic cloves, minced

5 large leaves collard greens, stems removed and leaves cut in half (layer the leaves on top of each other, then roll lengthwise into a long cigar and cut into 1/3-inch wide pieces)

2/3 cup water

1/2 teaspoon lemon zest

Juice of half a lemon

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/4 teaspoon salt

Set a saute pan over medium heat. Once hot, add the bacon and cook until the fat has rendered and the bacon is crisp. Remove the bacon pieces from the pan and set on a paper towel; leave the bacon fat in the pan.

Add the carrots to the saute pan and cook, stirring often, about 2 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook 30 second to 1 minute or until fragrant.

Stir in the collard greens and cook until lightly wilted and bright green, about 3 minutes. Add the water and simmer, uncovered, until the greens are tender and the water has evaporated, about 10 to 12 minutes.

Stir in the lemon zest, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Toss with reserved bacon and serve hot.