This is the type of recipe I don’t normally write down – an impromptu side dish that came together because I happened to have some broccoli and an itch to break out some of my favorite condiments.

In fact, this applies to most things I cook; I don’t make many dishes quite the same way twice. I just make things up based on what I have on hand, then taste and adjust as I go along.

It’s like my own little episode of Chopped. Except for some reason Ted Allen never shows up…

While this is all fine and good, it means I never write anything down! So when it comes to recreating a dish to post it here, I have a small issue in that there is no exact recipe beyond what I can struggle to remember.

Well this time, I was smarter than the broccoli.

Welcome to what is hopefully the first of many recipes that I didn’t have to make 8 times before I remembered to write it down for you!

This snazzy side dish comes together in a snap. It’s basically a stir-fry without the wok! You still want to prep your ingredients ahead of time, and get your pan stupidly hot.

Once the broccoli gets nice and toasty you add the sauce, simmer for a couple of minutes and chomp away.

Any glaze ingredients you might not have should be easy to find in the Asian section of your grocery store. They’re all great ingredients with a lot of versatility  - good ones to have around!

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You know that point when you’re about to go out of town and trying to whittle down the produce in the house? And then you end up with a potato and a handful of arugula and think, well I guess I’ll try to make a meal out of this…

It could just be me. Other folks might go for take-out at that point, but I like a good food challenge.

I especially like it when an attempt to use up some random food ends up being really, really delicious.

My baked potatoes normally get ALL the fixin’s thrown on top. Why not, right?

Well, think of this as the minimalist baked potato. Minimal effort and ingredients that yield huge flavor in return.

It starts out in the usual manner. Rub some oil on the potato, sprinkle it with salt, stab it with a fork a few times.

The fork part can double as a way to relieve some stress if you need it to.

The potato gets thrown in the oven and forgotten about for the better part of an hour. Once it’s done, you’re 2 minutes away from potato magic.

Have you sautéed arugula before? I hadn’t until I made this dish. It’s crazy how much 30 seconds in a pan can change the flavor. Especially if there is butter and garlic in said pan. It mellows out a little and becomes more like spinach’s funky cousin.

Arugula and garlicky butter taste really nice with parmesan cheese, so that goes on top. Going out of town or not, I’ve always got some Reggiano in the fridge!

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I guess I can see why some people aren’t down with beets.

They’re a bit funky looking, and most people seem to have some unpleasant childhood beet memories. Just like peas, lima beans and brussels sprouts before them, beets get tossed in the mental “icky healthy food” bin without a fair fight!

You can’t just slop some plain boiled peas or a pile of raw shredded beets on a plate and expect your kid (or anyone, for that matter) to rejoice.

Beets deserve a bit more attention.

A little time and love, that’s all they’re asking for.

I like to do a roast/steam situation for my beets. You put them in a dish with a little olive oil, cover it in foil and forget about them until they’re done! If you aren’t working in bulk, you can always roast one beet in a foil pouch, much like you would for roasting garlic.

But today we aren’t stopping at beets. There’s a whole salad to be made! One that I think could convert a beet hater or two. I’m curious to find out if it would change the mind of my mom, who swears beets taste like dirt.

There is an earthiness to them, yes. But dirt?!

Well, if there are people who think cilantro tastes like soap… who knows.

These earthy beets get paired with earthy lentils, because they’re friends like that. It’s all going to get tossed in an extremely acidic dressing, so never fear.

The salad gets mixed with fresh celery, then topped with salty feta cheese and crunchy walnuts.

The really great thing about this salad is that each of the two main components can be prepared ahead of time and left to chill in the fridge for a good week. So if you happen to roast beets or cook lentils in large batches like I do, you’re in luck!

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Oh, heeeeeeyyyyyyyyyy guys!

So I haven’t touched this blog of mine in over a month, AND I’m bringing you cranberry relish after Thanksgiving.

I’m super on top of things. No worries.

During that month I packed up all of our crap, moved to a new city (again), unpacked said crap, hosted Thanksgiving, and then galavanted around San Francisco with family for the better part of a week.

I also made you this Cranberry Ginger Relish… with the most earnest intentions of posting it before Thanksgiving, but oh well. If you’re anything like me, it’s still completely relevant because cranberry relish is awesome all the freaking time, not just one day a year!

It should be mentioned that I didn’t always feel this way.

Once upon a time, the only cranberries I ate came in the form of that mysterious, cranberry-like jello that shoots out of a can and wobbles all around your plate. And oh, how I loved it. Even when my mom started using fresh cranberries for our Thanksgiving meal, she would always buy a can of the cranberry goo, just for me. I wanted nothing to do with that weird looking chunky stuff she started slinging year after year.

Fresh cranberries?? Orange zest?! Pffft – I’ll stick to my can, thanks.

I feel as though somebody should’ve tried a little harder to tell me what I was missing out on. I mean, it’s not like I was a stubborn kid or anything…

Hah.

Haha.

So I have a double PSA for today:

1. If you’re stubbornly clutching your canned cranberry sauce and still haven’t tried one with fresh cranberries, do yourself a favor and try it. It’s so much more flavorful, and this one in particular is spicy, citrusy and simple to make.

2. If you’re only eating cranberry relish once a year, wake up! This stuff freezes like nobody’s business, lasts well in the fridge, and tastes delicious on, um, everything. Yogurt and granola, BOOM. Cranberry relish it up. Ice cream, panna cotta, cheesecake, etc.? Yup. Smother those fools in relish.

Get cray with your cranberry.

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Even though it was 80-some-odd degrees outside when I made this salad, I can safely say that I am now fully and officially into fall.

My tea supply has been restocked. I got a new pair of fuzzy pajama pants.

I’ve got my stack of Thanksgiving themed magazines piled up on my nightstand.

Did I mention that some of our family is actually coming up to see US this year and I’m HOSTING Thanksgiving?! Oooohhhh yeah. It’s on.

Spoiler alert to those that will be attending: You’re most likely gonna be eating this salad.

Let’s do this!

A fall without butternut squash is a fall that I want no part in. It’s always one of the first things I reach for when the leaves start to change.

It’s a bit of an odd looking character that seems to intimidate a lot of people, but if you have a knife and a vegetable peeler, you’re good to go.

Just cut off the top and bottom ends for stability, stand it up and slice the skin off with the vegetable peeler. From there you can cut it in half vertically, remove the seeds with a spoon, and chop as you like.

In this case, we’re cubin’ and roastin’.

This salad has a nice balance of flavors and textures. The butternut squash is roasted with a coating of brown sugar and cayenne pepper, for sweetness and heat.

We also have radicchio for bitterness, pepitas for a hearty crunch, apples for a mild sweetness, and tarragon for a fresh finishing punch of flavor. Blue cheese brings its famous funkiness to the party as well. It just isn’t a party without some funk.

All the fun of fall is hanging out in one bowl, just begging you to eat it and all its healthy glory. So dig in!

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This started off with such an innocent thought: I haven’t had cornbread in a while…

From there my mind wandered to the mound of fresh corn in my fridge.

Well I should definitely add some of that.

But I can’t JUST add corn. What else…

Crispy bacon? Sure.

Use the rendered bacon fat in place of butter? YES.

Ok. Slow down. This might be getting a little too intense.

Perhaps I need to lighten it up a bit.  Ah! Basil!

No joke. That was my thought process.

At any given time, there’s a good chance I’m hashing out some sort of internal food debate. It’s just how I work.

And any time bacon is involved, well, you just win.

Basil and corn? Probably one of the best summer food combos in existence.

Put it all together in a cornbread muffin and it almost feels like a meal in cup form!

Sweet corn, salty bacon, peppery basil – it has it all.

And muffins are just cute, so why not?

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Let’s consider this step one of incorporating real food back into my diet.

A week of awesome vacationing/eating in San Diego was directly followed by a week of sickness/sleeping, during which the most solid food I ate was an antibiotic.

Yesterday I was able to stand up long enough to leave the house, so I knew I needed two things:

-a burger, animal style

-a salad that took minimal effort and used some of those veggie type things I’d been missing out on all week.

Oh, and then I made this coffee cured pulled pork for dinner. I’m crazy. I know.

I guess I went into overdrive because I hadn’t really cooked at all this month. Not cool!

But you know what is cool? Summer veggies.

They almost make it too easy.

Gather up pretty much any grouping of summer’s bounty, throw in a bowl with some citrus and you’ve got yourself a meal.

If you can grill said bounty – well now we’re really talkin’.

If not, there’s always your old friend the cast iron skillet. He’s got your back.

I am out-of-control-obsessed with corn right now. It’s too damn good.

I swear, somehow this year’s corn is the sweetest ever! And it costs a pile of pennies! That’s always nice.

This salad would work great for backyard entertaining – it’s easy to throw together and it gives your guests the option to get some kind of health factor in there between all the margaritas and bbq ribs and burgers and whatnot.

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This salad seems entirely appropriate coming off the heels of a serious Breaking Bad addiction in this household. Super serious.

Three weeks ago, the hubs innocently suggested we start watching it, probably thinking we’d be able to continue on with life as usual afterward. Oh no.

In that time, we blew threw all 4 seasons with pretty much every free moment we had. We. Could. Not. Stop.

Don’t worry – I do see the irony here. Hopelessly addicted to a show about drugs – lol.

Thankfully, this lead to a much healthier addiction: mango & jicama salad.

Let’s play out a scenario: you have no time to cook – duh – there’s more Breaking Bad to watch. It’s 89 degrees in your house, so you need something light and refreshing. You could probably also use some fruit in your life since the whole not cooking thing has lead to lots of takeout food and a lack of grocery shopping.

So… if you run to the store in the afternoon while hubs is still at work, you can whip this up and have the next episode queued up on the TV by the time he gets home. Genius!

No joke – that was the thought process.

Then, since I had chowed down near half of it by the time he did get home, I thought, “No worries – I’ll add the rest of that leftover chicken breast and make it a meal!” The genius is multiplying!

My brain chose to skip over the part where Josh is weirded out by meat and fruit together. And bread and fruit. There are some oddities surrounding fruit.

Leftover pizza for him – the rest of that salad for me!

This salad is beyond simple to make and packs a lot of flavor. Mango and jicama – two things that are perfectly tasty on their own – are given an extra punch of flavor from lime juice, fresh ginger, ground chile pepper and cilantro.

Eat it as is, or – if you wouldn’t freak out anyone you love – add some shrimp or chicken for a more well rounded meal.

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Alright Patrice (my dearest gluten-intolerant friend), next time you ask me to make hummus or something with bacon, I’m making you these instead!

Well, I might also make something with bacon. We can always use some bacon.

Anyway, about these cakes. They’re sort of like hummus in that garbanzo beans, tahini, lemon, and garlic are involved. But wait! Then they’re mixed with fresh herbs and jalapeno, formed into cakes, and crisped up in oil.

Then, as if crispy cakes of hummusy goodness weren’t enough, they’re topped off with a super flavorful spicy herb sauce that echoes the flavors in the cakes.

You could serve these as an appetizer, a light lunch with a salad, or a side dish. If you’re anything like me and were snacking all day before making these, 2 of them make a mighty fine dinner. The sauce, if you somehow had some leftover, could be used on pretty much anything savory that needs an extra punch. Serve it over grilled meat, drizzled into a soup, stirred into plain rice… get crazy with it.

You could also make these into smaller, more bite-sizey cakes if you were feeling cutesy. I dished these out with a standard ice cream scoop, because that’s how I roll. Or scoop.

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Oh, hello again!

That brief recess in posting was brought to you by my best friend – Patrice! She came to visit for 5 magnificently lazy days filled with gluttony, bad TV, even worse movies, and some short-lived adventuring in and around Mountain View. We even made up a couple of cocktails! One of which might be worthy of posting, the other… maybe not so much. We also burned things with a kitchen torch. Delicious things.

As soon as I dropped her off at the airport yesterday morning, I was missing home. Good thing I’ll be there in 3 days! Woohoo!

To tide me over until then, I needed to make something from my childhood. Lemony Caesar Salad, perhaps? Why yes! There was a time when my mom made this damn near every night as part of our dinner and I loved it.

I called my mom to get the recipe. We spent several minutes bouncing a series of guesses and approximations off each other as we struggled to remember exactly how this salad was made years ago. I jotted down some notes and set off to experiment.

It tasted just like I remembered – only better. Anchovy paste was replaced with whole fillets, and pre-shredded grocery store brand parmesan cheese was swapped out for large shavings of Parmigiano Reggiano (you have to say that in the Giada voice); I even used organic lettuce. Then there’s the homemade croutons from good quality bread.

Oh. My. Gosh. Heaven. Josh said it was the best caesar salad he’d ever had – and that was after it sat around for a while being photographed!

This salad is legit. It has elements of a classic caesar salad – the coddled egg, anchovies – but it’s different. My mom loves lemon, so her version has a good amount of lemon juice, and no mustard or worcestershire to stand in its way.

This is the caesar salad I grew up on – the one all others are compared to. It’s bright and acidic, which explains why I never really liked the super creamy kind. My mom made sure to remind me to put “2-3 garlic cloves” in the recipe, because not everybody loves garlic as much as I do. Yes, mother…

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