Sauteed Kale and Garden Vegetables
Here's a fun fact about Kale: You need about 7 metric hectares to make 4 servings of sauteed Kale. I don't even know how large a hectare is, but it sounds big - kind of a combination of heck and acre. All I know is that when I set out to make sauteed Kale, I started with a mountain and ended with a molehill.
Not that I'm complaining. Kale's a big leafy thing and, like spinach, it loses a lot of its water content during the cooking process. The result is a flavor-packed dish that is both good and good for you. While visiting a friend, I cooked up a mountain of the stuff, mixed with some tasty fresh garden vegetables.
Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins
Every now and again, I get an uncontrollable urge to bake. If it has been a month since I've cranked up the oven, chances are I'm itching to put on the mitts and get back to baking - a yearning that is merely amplified by the inhospitable heat of a small kitchen in the summertime. So now that Fall has rolled around and the mercury has started to drop, I decided to try my hand at some lemon poppy seed muffins. A great start to a fall morning, and a stellar way to fail a drug test.
Author's note to the English Language: Poppy seed should be one word. Say it with me: Poppyseed. OK, let's move on.
Fruit Salad with Mint Sugar
I love a good fresh fruit salad. It's the perfect side-dish to a savory breakfast or brunch, the opportunity to inject some seasonal sweetness to eggs or bacon. Sometimes, though, I want a little something more than just fruit - a little something to set the fruit salad apart from the rest of the pack. This recipe is a simple and easy way to do just that. It's a perfect summertime treat, and a great way to use up that extra fresh mint in the garden.
Spicy Caipirinha
A couple of weekends ago I welcomed in the fall the way I welcome in every other event in my life, from the exciting (new job!) to the mundane (new dust bunnies!) by going to a bar. The bar in question was Rye House because it’s the only decent place to get a real cocktail around Union Square. Don’t say Flat Iron. It’s not worth it.
It was a crisp, darkening, mildly damp day. Perfect bar weather. I popped into Rye House, slunk onto a stool at the large, mostly empty marble bar and interrupted the bartender’s dinner.
Blackberry Preserve Grilled Cheese
This sounds weird. It's a strange combination. It's not something you would think to do often, and certainly not something that I had ever tried before. But it just might be the tastiest flavor explosion of a grilled cheese that you have ever had. When I saw it over at The Cook Mobile through a friend, I knew I had to give it a try.
The process is fairly simple. If you know how to make a grilled cheese sandwich, you have all the skills needed to whip this bad boy up. If you don't know how to make a grilled cheese sandwich, you should probably stop reading this, take a second, and think about what you're doing with your life.