Monica tries to cook...

While scrolling through my Pinterest app, I saw that Heidi from 101 Cookbooks had posted an older recipe from her site - Green Curry Broth. I can't explain why, but it really appealed to me at that moment and I made it for dinner not too long after that.

First, you chop and chop and slice and dice and chop some more to create the foundation for the delicious green curry broth. This is the longest part of the recipe. After all of this cooks down to impart its flavor, you strain it out and throw it away. At first I was sad about this, but then I tasted the broth - it was amazing. Next time, I would not bother with all the fine dicing and such - you can get this done much faster with bigger chunks and since you're straining it, you probably won't even notice a difference. I also wouldn't hesitate to make this broth with the intention of freezing it, without any add-ins, to enjoy on a rainy day.

Once the broth has been made, you can put pretty much whatever you want in it. We opted for rice noodles, shredded cabbage, broccoli, frozen corn and green beans, and I saved the tops of the scallions (used in the broth) and added those in too. I chopped handfuls of mint, basil, and cilantro from my balcony and mixed those in at the very end. I topped off my own bowl with a little swirl of coconut milk. This was a good combination of things, but I would break the noodles in half next time, and I had also intended to add cubes of tofu, but things got away from me.

Well, week 2 is over, but it was much easier than week 1. We made quite a few tasty meals. We started the week off with a family Christmas party - we brought baked salmon with chimichurri sauce. We also revamped one of our favorites, lemon pepper shrimp, to be detox-friendly (and MUCH healthier). Typically, this dish consists of whole wheat orzo and broccoli sauteed with garlic, topped with shrimp in a lemony, peppery, garlicky, buttery sauce. We left out the orzo and we left out the butter, making the shrimp with only the lemon, pepper, garlic, and a bit of olive oil, so there wasn't much of a sauce. We were very pleased with the results!

Throughout the week, we also ate our Dark Days meal of beans and cabbage, and I improved upon my favorite smoothie from last week, the Carrot Mango Smoothie, by adding some strawberries to it as well. We used up the only soup in the freezer that we can eat, a veggie-filled base for Soup au Pistou, to which we added white beans and a cube of basil puree to give it flavor. One day for lunch at work, I had half a bag of frozen edamame for lunch, which surprisingly filled me up a lot!

I also managed to squeeze in another recipe from Plenty, one of the two featured cookbooks for January. The recipe is for Saffron Cauliflower, shown up above, which we ate as a side with salmon. Because you cook the cauliflower, onions, and golden raisins in the oven, covered, the saffron flavor steams into them. If you really like saffron (I find it overrated, but that's just me) you will probably like this dish. I would have preferred if the cauliflower mix was left open to roast and crisp up a little, but it was an OK dish. I probably won't make it again.

This week is week 3, the final week of the detox. It's going to take all my willpower not to go straight back to sugar and coffee and bacon! Wish me luck!

I am way behind on Dark Days! The detox is kind of hard to locally source, so I'm trying to think of things to "localize" wherever I can. This week's local meal was beans & cabbage from Super Natural Every Day. I've made and posted this before, but not with local sources. The cabbage and potatoes came from last month's Princeton farmers' market, the shallots from my CSA, and the Jacob's cattle beans (first used in another Dark Days meal) from Cayuga Pure Organics in New York state. The beans were much better suited for this than for what I previously used them. They go from undercooked to exploded in a matter of minutes, so they were still all broken up, but it worked out fine for this dish. Lesson learned, local is not always going to be better quality, and you have to make that decision for yourself. I don't anticipate buying that type of bean from that source again in the future, though they may have just been a little bit older.

I'm doing the 2012 Whole Living Action Plan, which is kind of a healthy 3-week detox. This first week, I ate only fruits, veggies, nuts, and plant based oils. It was hard at times, because I was seriously craving sweets from the holiday season, but we made it through the cravings and I even dropped a pound or two of unwanted weight! We cut this week short to 5 days instead of 7 because we have another family Christmas gathering to attend and we wanted to have more options than just the veggie tray. I'll write more about week 2 next week. I've been too busy during the week to post, so while I'm doing this detox, I'll do a summary at the end of the week. Hopefully when I'm done I'll be craving nutritious foods instead of all the sugar I've been craving.

Here are some of the foods I've eaten this week...

Fruit Salad Smoothie - from the Vitamix cookbook, which came with my Christmas gift :) and this was the first smoothie I tried with the Vitamix. It was delicious. It had a bunch of different fruits along with carrot and cucumber.

Berry Delicious Smoothie - also from the Vitamix cookbook, some pineapple and berries, including cranberries, which provided a really nice flavor. I plan to make this again this week.

Orange-Berry Smoothie - This one was pretty good, kind of tangy from all the orange juice. I would make it again.

Beet and Carrot Smoothie - This was my least favorite. I couldn't even force myself to eat it. I don't like beets, so I thought this would make them easier for me to stomach so that I could get all their nutrients without the flavor and texture I don't like, but the beet overpowered the smoothie and the ginger didn't help either.

Carrot, Mango, and Herb Smoothie - I'm drinking this one right now and it's one of my favorites from the week, probably because it doesn't have any veggies in it... just carrot juice, orange juice, mango chunks, and mint. I put about half the amount of mint in because it can be overpowering, and I just get a slight refreshing coolness from it.


Kale Slaw with Red Cabbage and Carrots - I had this for lunch a few times, and I really liked the tangy dressing and the crunchy pepita seeds and the hemp seeds were good too. I liked the refreshing bite of parsley though toward the end of the week I got lazy and it was just kale, cabbage, the nuts, and dressing.

Steamed Broccoli and Squash with Tahini Dressing - We had this for dinner one night and it was one of our least favorites of the week. The broccoli with the tahini sauce was the best part. I definitely wouldn't make this one again.

Roasted Peppers, Cauliflower, and Almonds - This one was pretty good. I liked the roasted peppers and the saltiness from the kalamata olives. One thing I would do differently is to make a better dressing, since this one was mainly just lemon and oil. This would also be really good with feta. Boy do I miss cheese.

I've already started week 2, and I've moved on to making mostly my own recipes either improvised or from other sources. One in particular deserves its own post, and if time allows, I will share it this week.

While I'm waiting for my official photographer to send me our Thanksgiving photos, I thought I'd share some notes on recipes that I haven't gotten around to posting about. I've got a few posts started for recipes that I never photographed - since the main point of my blog is to post about the food I make and to avoid making the same mistakes twice, I'm going to share them quickly all at once, instead of dedicating a separate post to each. Tune in later this weekend for our Thanksgiving post and for some Italy pictures!


Coconut Granola Bars
The coconut granola bars, from NY Times Recipes for Health, were a tasty treat on our vacation. We snacked on them at the airport and on the plane, crumbled some into yogurt at the continental breakfast, and left a few for Deanna's roommates too. They were super easy and very crunchy. If you like those Nature Valley crunchy oats and honey granola bars, you'll like these, and you'll be eating a home-cooked, less-processed (and therefore BETTER) version of them.

I was skeptical about this recipe. Baked pasta... good. With cabbage... a little weird. And potatoes... with pasta? The cabbage mixture has mustard in it... and there's cheese. But I needed a recipe that would use up a decent amount of Napa cabbage, so I gave it a shot. Well, it was really surprisingly good. I actually plan to make it again, though it won't be for me (more on that at a later date).

There are a few layers in this recipe. You repeat each layer twice, in the same order. First, a whole grain pasta - I used a whole wheat fusilli. Next, the potatoes, followed by grated Parmesan and cubes of fontina. The final layer is a mixture of Napa cabbage and leeks, flavored with garlic and whole-grain mustard. I added extra mustard until I found the cabbage mixture absolutely delicious on its own. After being baked in the oven, the cheese melted and the mustard flavor developed a new dimension. We gladly ate the leftovers for a few days.

It's finally here - Heidi's new book, Super Natural Every Day, arrived in the mail on Tuesday. I first made the White Beans & Cabbage pictured on the cover on Wednesday with little success. The idea is for potatoes and white beans to brown before being tossed with finely shredded cabbage. I tried to use a stainless skillet, so my potatoes basically crushed themselves into a sheet at the bottom of the pan and prevented everything else from browning. The result was decent enough to make me want to try again, so I went for it on Friday night with a non-stick skillet. Everything turned out the way it was supposed to this time, and a generous dusting of finely grated Parmesan tied it all together.


One fun trick I discovered while making this recipe was how to get a fine shred out of cabbage. I cut it into four quarters, then put the outside part down and held the core with my left hand, kind of like an upside-down triangle. I ran my knife along the cut side with a downward motion. I got most of the cabbage shredded finely this way and only had to slice a bit of it. Knowing this makes me much more inclined to buy and cook cabbage.

We've still got some cabbage to use up from my last CSA pickup. (There's also some turnips, rutabaga, and sweet potatoes, and some parsley and cilantro that are holding up very nicely.) The cabbage soup used half a head, and we used the other half for this Crunchy Slaw Salad from Super Natural Cooking. It was part of a meal that used something from the freezer, something leftover, something that's produce, and something on the counter that needed to be used up.

The something from the freezer was my Orange Cauliflower and Butternut Squash Soup. I think it thinned out a bit. (However, this whole moving soup to the fridge, spooning some chunks out, and putting it back in the freezer is working out really well. I wasn't eating any soup for a while because I thought I'd have to finish the whole 2 or 4 cups, but that apparently isn't the case.) The something leftover was the marinated onions used in the "Classic" Grilled Cheese sandwich we had a few days ago. The something produce was, obviously, the cabbage, but we also had some questionable apples on the counter. I took the firmest one and had to toss the rest. :( And finally, the something on the counter was the delicious bread I got from Panera for those same grilled cheese sandwiches. (I want to note also for my own future reference that I omitted the cream from the cabbage salad dressing.)

So we were left with a very nice meal: an orange vegetable soup, a cabbage slaw with some apple shreds and walnuts, and a nice slab of bread toasted in the oven with Gruyere and marinated onions.


I'm enjoying the challenge of trying to use food from the freezer. I made a breakfast polenta with some defrosted raspberries to sweeten it up. It was a nice breakfast but not a "recipe" worth sharing. Something that is, though: a helpful holiday cookie guide :)

I must be making up for my dislike of soup all these years. The parade of soup continues with a Rustic Cabbage Soup. After a few weeks in the fridge I brought out a cabbage and it was cut into bite-size pieces. A pound of Great Northern beans, thanks to my pressure cooker, split perfectly between this soup and the next day's batch of Ribollita. I used the recommended 1/2 cube of Rapunzel w/ herbs, which is growing on me (I usually use the plain veg one). A few very old but viable potatoes were made into matchsticks and tossed in. Of course, there's always an onion, and garlic too. As I'm looking at the original recipe again I'm noticing that I missed the grated cheese on top, but oh well, less calories right?

While I'm loving the soups I do occasionally crave solid food, so this week we revisited those delicious scallops we had a few weeks ago, and I'm counting on some lemon pepper shrimp soon too :)

As of right now I'm all caught up on my posting. I'll be eating from the freezer a lot this month thanks to school/finals, but expect some fun things soon: my cookie exchange pick (still trying to decide between several whole-grain options), a few health-food experiments, probably some holiday-themed nonsense, and (surprise!) more soup.

I wanted to try more recipes with miso and came across this Chopped Miso Salad. I happened to have a green cabbage on hand and almost all the other ingredients, so I brought everything down to the beach and made it for my family.

This recipe was definitely a hit - it's variable and easy to make. I used sunflower seeds instead of almonds, added carrots, and made the dressing in a blender instead of just whisking it together. Everyone loved it, and we have already made it again. (It's very aesthetically pleasing with a mix of red and green cabbage also.) It's probably going to be a staple in our fridge down the shore this summer, at least as long as the cabbage is in season.

Week 4 (6/3/2010):
- 1 quart strawberries (PYO)
- 1 quart snow peas (PYO)
- 1 lb spinach
- 1 lb swiss chard (rainbow colors!)
- 4 heads of lettuce (2 green leaf, one smaller, tighter head type, and one called "deer tongue!")
- 1/2 lb arugula
- 2 bunches kale (I believe it is the Red Russian variety, different from last week's)

With the last kale of May, we made the kale chips. They would have been delicious if they weren't so salty! We may try again sometime, but we have been getting a different variety lately and are not sure how it would work with this type (Red Russian, I think). The lettuce was, of course, used for salad. Having just gotten used to having six heads, we went through it pretty fast. Some spinach and arugula were tossed in for a mixed salad. The strawberries were eaten quickly. My sister Deanna made a pasta dish using the spinach, a combination of Jamie Oliver's classic tomato spaghetti and a recipe from Giada with spinach and asiago cheese (the cheese is a new family favorite).

Here is where we started to get lazy. The kale and chard went unused as did much of the arugula. The snow peas weren't used until Thursday when the next batch of veg had already stormed our fridge (see below). We (well, I should probably say I) resolved to make a better effort in the upcoming week.


Week 5 (6/10/2010):
- 1 lb spinach
- 1 lb chard
- 6 heads lettuce (1 little weird one, 2 deer tongue, 1 green leaf, 2 red leaf)
- 2 bunches kale
- 1 bunch scallions
- 1 bunch radishes
- 2 heads radicchio
- 1 qt snow/snap peas, 1 pt each (PYO)
- a few sprigs of mint
- 4 summer squash (2 light green zucchini, 2 pattypan)

We made Asian chicken rolls (from the Pampered Chef book Grill it Quick!) on the grill - these are chicken tenderloins rolled up with a long, thin slice of carrot and one of the zucchini as well, secured with a toothpick and coated with Asian seasoning mix and a delicious glaze. Bits of zucchini and carrot were chopped up in a rice pilaf, with some scallions mixed in. To go along with this, I made sesame snap peas with carrots and red peppers using last week's snap peas. That seemed to be a hit, but I thought the peas were too bitter - maybe because we waited so long to use them. Deanna used up the zucchini we didn't use for the recipe in an omelet.

My mom had a barbecue with her friends on Saturday, which is when I found the mint which I had forgotten in the bottom of my cooler. (Oops...) Fortunately, Ken had trimmed the mint at his parents' house so we were able to make mojitos! (My favorite drink. Yum!) With some of the mixed lettuce and snap peas, we made a Berry Pine Nut Salad from a Pampered Chef cookbook (Berry-Pine Nut Chicken Salad, minus the chicken, from 29 Minutes to Dinner), which also had toasted pine nuts, red onions, blueberries, and a raspberry vinaigrette. It was a beautiful salad (I made quite a nice presentation, thank you) and everyone seemed to really enjoy it. (I had it the next day, though, and I did not like it. Oh well!) Since it was a barbecue, we also made grilled radicchio. Some people liked it, some didn't - I think it might have been better if we were able to marinate it. The next day we had a lot of barbecue leftovers for a lunch with the grandparents, and we added in the roasted spring vegetables, which has become a family favorite and was the exact reason I chose radishes from the choice group this week. Instead of chives, my mom sprinkled scallions on top. Later in the week, I used some of the remaining scallions to make the Otsu from Super Natural Cooking (also available on 101 Cookbooks).

After not eating our kale or chard last week, I decided to take action and get creative. Since we are sharing all this produce, I usually don't take any of it home - we most often cook at my mom's and eat there, or I bring home the leftovers. This week, I took home the kale. I've never really had kale before but I know that it is a nutritional powerhouse, so I really wanted to like it. I've heard it tastes like and is in the same family as broccoli, so I decided we should try it in one of my favorite dishes - lemon pepper shrimp. We threw in a little broccoli, just to give us that familiar flavor in case the kale was a flop. It was delicious!!! We used one bunch of the kale for that, so we had a bunch left over for the next night's dinner. I had a bunch of things that I wanted to try, but I settled on a variation of the Matchstick Pasta on 101 Cookbooks. I left out the pomegranate seeds, crushed all the pistachios for the sauce instead of sprinkling half of them on whole, and didn't break up the pasta. Mine certainly wasn't as pretty, but it was a very delicious quick and easy weeknight dinner.


Week 6 (6/17/2010):
- 4 heads lettuce (2 green leaf, 2 red leaf)
- 2 bunches kale (1 Red Russian, 1 "regular")
- 2 bunches fennel (about 4 bulbs)
- 4 summer squash (1 light green zucchini, 3 dark green)
- 4 green garlic (bulbs and loooong stems)
- 12 heads broccoli
- 1/2 lb arugula
- a few sprigs each of rosemary, thyme, and oregano, and a bunch of chives (without flowers)

I was excited to see kale in the farm stand this week, since we discovered last week that we loved it, and I hadn't seen it on the list of available items on the farm's distribution blog. We used it immediately in our lemon-pepper shrimp recipe, along with a few heads of the broccoli and some of the green garlic. I chose the fennel from the choice group (the other option was the radicchio we weren't crazy about last week) as kind of a Father's Day present for my dad, who loves it and will eat it raw, roasted or grilled. He finished it all off raw this time. Deanna came with me this week and was super excited about the fresh herbs.

At the beach, we grilled some of the zucchini and last week's pattypan squash. We chopped a bulb of the garlic to eat with steamed green beans - delicious! For a quick and easy dinner when we got home on Sunday night, we made the Almond Soba Noodles from 101 Cookbooks using some of the broccoli.


Week 7 (6/24/2010):
- 4 bulbs green garlic
- 2 heads broccoli
- 1 lb chard
- 2 bunches kale (regular variety)
- 2 bunches fennel
- 1 Chinese cabbage
- 1 bunch onions
- 6 heads lettuce (4 red, 1 different type of red, 1 deer tongue)

I have been trying to share with my family - it's hard for me not to snatch up everything I want and take it home with me. I try to leave some, maybe even most, of the weekly produce for them. However, I am discovering more and more that I eat a lot more vegetables than they do. Last week after splitting the 12 heads of broccoli (6 for the two of us, 6 for the four of them) we used ours up fairly quickly, while they had some left over. (We took it down the shore and made a salmon version of our lemon pepper shrimp to finish it off.) I was disappointed to see only 2 heads of broccoli this week - it's one of my favorites. We finished it off in our lemon pepper shrimp recipe, of course, with some kale in there as well.

I chose fennel again for my dad, which he ate raw again, and he says he's not sick of it yet. I brought home the kale and chard for myself this week - I don't think we've eaten any chard yet this season and we've been collecting it for weeks. It has a much better shot of getting cooked, much less eaten, at my house than at my mom's. Plus, last week's bunch of regular-variety kale, which Deanna insisted on taking to make kale chips at the expense of my enjoying the red variety, is still in their fridge. We ended up having some chard sauteed with garlic, kind of like spinach. It was pretty good, but didn't blow me away. I used up the rest of the chard, including the stems, in Walnut Miso Noodles.

The lettuce and onions were used in a salad - the onions were particularly delicious. (My dressing recipe has evolved into something amazing: 1/2 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup white balsamic, a clove or two of garlic, a shallot, two moderate and controlled squeezes of dijon mustard, and salt and pepper. Easy, classy and so delicious.) The garlic was, unfortunately, forgotten at the beach, so hopefully it's still good next weekend. I would like to look for more raw uses. The Chinese cabbage was forgotten by everyone, so maybe it will turn up in next month's post.