The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn

Have you ever considered a radical career change? Sometimes I dream about what I might have done in an "alternate life". I think that I could have become an executive assistant to an important and busy person, making their life functional and organised. Sometimes I think I could have been a technical writer; maybe a science correspondent for a newspaper. Other times I think I could have set up a bed and breakfast by a lake.

I have never wanted to a be a full time chef, though. I have now read a couple of books about people who threw in the towel at their "ordinary" (non-cooking) jobs and went to culinary school. These brave souls are willing to give up their stability and life's work to date to retrain as a restaurant chef. I love cooking; I do! And perhaps you do, too. But would you want to train as a cook? Or work full time as a chef?

Cauliflower Hummus

Do you need more strategies to help you (or your family) eat more veggies? Here is one of my favourites: dip your vegetables in vegetables. Yup, skip the store-bought or homemade dairy-based dips and stick to veggie-based condiments.

This is a beloved way of eating for me and I have even talked about it before when I made sweet potato spread. And now I have experienced the wonders of cauliflower hummus!

Warm Bean and Courgette Salad with Mint

I read a lot of food blogs. Precisely 278 food blogs. I use Google Reader to do this - it aggregates all the new posts and if you've never tried it before, you should! Start by adding Simply Cooked and a few other blogs to your Reader and away you go! (You'll love it, I promise.)

Here's the thing. There is a big, gaping hole in my list of food blogs. I want, but can't seem to find, more food blogs that concentrate on vegetables. I can't get over my love to all things veggie, and I want to find more people who feel the same. I want to drool over pictures of beautiful salads. I want to find intriguing combinations of crisp and green things. I want to feel inspired to make more of my vegetables and inspired to buy more new-to-me items.

Bean Sprout Salad

Bean sprouts - not the sexiest of vegetables. In fact I find them kind of unpleasant. But I learned a new method of preparing them and I was mighty impressed. Blanch them - a brief dip in boiling water made them silky! I was amazed at how much more palatable, enjoyable, even, the sprouts became.

Weekend Links #27

Weekend Links is a way of sharing all the engrossing things I see around the internet. I publish Weekend Links approximately every two weeks. As usual, I welcome your ideas and feedback.

food reading links:
--A Christian food blogger talks about bread (from Kitchen Stewardship). She and her family are gluten-free for health reasons but Jesus calls himself "the Bread of Life". How does she reconcile life and faith?
--Are you a supertaster? This article includes a link to a quiz on the BBC Science website to help you find out (from The Guardian).
--A study links eating more fruits and vegetables with better moods (from Science Daily). Eating better today also improves your mood tomorrow.

Valentine's Day Ideas

We long ago stopped debating about eating out or in for Valentine's Day. Eating out on February 14 is too expensive, with fancy, overpriced set menus. And the service always seems a little surly because the restaurant is busy and the staff would rather be elsewhere. As a result, we eat at home on Valentine's.

(The best day to go to a restaurant, we discovered, is February 15! The restaurant is much quieter and the meals are back to normal price.)

What about you? Will you or your loved one be cooking for Valentine's Day? Here are some ideas to make this romantic day easy and successful.

Starters:

Pumpkin and peach salad with lemongrass dressing

Cauliflower soup with roasted red pepper swirl

Beef Stir Fry with Black Bean Sauce

Happy Chinese New Year! It's the biggest festival of the year this week in Hong Kong and everywhere is decorated and filled with people celebrating. Red is the colour of choice everywhere. Buildings are decorated with lights and cartoon-ish animals as well.

I'm not celebrating this week, though. I had two small procedures on Saturday to remove a mole from my face and a large lesion from my foot. I'm immobilised on the couch for at least a week. So it's probably a good thing that we have a week's holidays from work. The stitches on my cheek are making it hard for me to eat (and smile!, as you can see below). So it's mostly soup at the moment.