Cannellini, Green Bean, and Tomato Salad

At the local vegetable market, I buy these long beans. They are sold coiled up in a bunch and are usually about 40 cm long when laid out. Fortunately for me, they are easy to use: in all the same ways as Western green beans. So I usually cut them into bite-sized pieces and stir-fry them or blanch them for salad.

Thai Basil and Cashew Stir-Fry

Sometimes my body just craves a big pile of vegetables. One of these days was last week during my half term holidays. After ten weeks at school my body was run down and seeking nutrients. What I needed was more sleep, less stress, and some highly healthy food.

In the past I have arrived at my half term break on the verge of illness. Many years I have made it to the Saturday after school ends and succumbed to a cold or the flu. I have laid on the couch and dribbled away my holiday.

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.

Red and Green Salad with Chayote

Ms Hovey was my favourite teacher in elementary school. Her grade four class was the first place I tasted kiwi, and the first place I saw baking soda react with vinegar. I was a quiet, bookish girl with long, brown hair and glasses, and I wanted to please her. Perhaps because of this, she encouraged me to enter the school's public speaking competition.

magic beans

Where's the magic? Life is magical when you hear a funny joke and giggle all day. It's magic when you have a long, heart-to-heart talk over dinner. Magic the feeling a comfy couch at the end of a draining work day. The magic is in finding a vegetable you want to eat more of. And magic is knowing you can recreate that recipe.

poached egg for lunch

December's Daring Cooks challenge is a perfect one for me. Jenn and Jill have challenged The Daring Cooks to learn to perfect the technique of poaching an egg. My favourite lunch is some sort of veggies accompanied by some sort of egg. And poaching the perfect egg is a skill I have relished learning. Together with some green bean and leek veggie pancakes, I had a perfect lunch.

light chicken laksa

Sometimes it really is better to be late than never. For example, the first time I was going to meet my new boss I got stuck in a rain storm (it was Amber Rain, in my defense) and I arrived 45 minutes late. Mortified, and dripping from head to toe, I went in to meet him--and was greeted with a massive smile and a firm handshake. I'm glad I persevered through the downpour.

spaghetti with velvety green sauce and bacon

I was inspired this week by Ele's post about pureed broccoli pasta sauce. Like Ele, I have made the delicious Kitchn recipe Velvety Broccoli and Feta Pasta. Pureeing the broccoli was so delicious and now the idea has cropped up again: first on 101 Cookbooks and then on The Kitchenist. And with broccoli firmly established as Ant's favourite vegetable.... Well, the time had come for a pureed recipe of my own.


We had a lovely broccoli from last week's veg box. But we also had one of Ant's least liked veggies: green beans. He always complains that they squeak when he eats them. He hates all things that squeak, especially food. So I was determined to use up some of the green beans without any dreaded squeaking. All that was needed to complete my inspiration was a basic spaghetti with zucchini and eggs recipe from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.

Spaghetti with Velvety Green Sauce and Bacon
serves 2

Boil a large pot of water and cook 250 g spaghetti according to the packet instructions.
In another pot of boiling, salted water cook a large handful of green beans for two minutes. Add chopped florets of broccoli and boil for a further three minutes or until desired tenderness (or longer to avoid squeakiness!). Remove from heat and drain the veggies.
Meanwhile, gently fry a chopped onion, then remove the onion from the pan into a bowl and fry a few snipped rashers of bacon.
In the bowl, add to the onion the cooked veggies, 2 eggs, and a generous handful of grated Parmesan cheese. Puree using a handheld blender (or in a food processor).
Serve the spaghetti topped with broccoli sauce, bacon, cracked black pepper, and more Parmesan cheese.

The deliciousness of this meal was well worth the vast quantities of washing up it generated! The grateful eaters were very willing to help.

Cookbook Review: Leon: Ingredients & Recipes

While we were in Sydney, Tamra was talking up the Leon: Ingredients and Recipes cookbook. How had I failed to hear about a restaurant (with six branches in London) so in line with everything I think good should be? At Leon they serve fast food that “tastes good and does you good”. Each time we met she mentioned another recipe she loved from the cookbook. So when I got home I went straight out to buy it (and joyously, it was half price at Waterstone’s).


I dived in, to find that the book is in two parts, ingredients and recipes. The first half contains lovely drawings and interesting information about hosts of fruits, veggies, meats, grains, dairy products, and so on. Recipe and cooking suggestions are given for the ingredients and the writing is funny and relaxed. There’s a great pull out cheese map of Europe (soon to be laminated, perhaps, and put up in the kitchen?). There’s a tear out seasonality chart showing not only fruits and veg, but also herbs and fish.


The second half of the book is full of healthy and tasty looking recipes. They are marked if they are low GI, low fat, vegetarian, wheat free, dairy free, or gluten free (and all the recipes are some combination of these). Tamra highlighted a few for me to try and loads of others jumped out at me as new favourites. When I went to visit my friend Sarah I took Leon with me and we tried two recipes: Magic Beans and Black-eyed Peas, Spinach and Lemon (with a few adaptations for Sarah’s veg box collection). By the end of my three day stay she had also read the whole cookbook and we went out to buy her one of her own.

Magic Beans
adapted from Leon: Ingredients and Recipes

2 T olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 red chilli, chopped, seeds discarded for less heat if desired
1 T rosemary, finely chopped, or 1 t dried rosemary
200 g green beans
2 T lemon juice
3 spring onions, chopped
salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the garlic, chilli, and rosemary. Cook to soften.
Before the garlic browns, add the green beans, lemon juice, and a splash of water. Cover and cook until the beans are soft, about 15 minutes. Add some more water if things start to stick.
Add the spring onions and heat through.
Remove from the heat and leave for five minutes for the magic to happen. Then season and enjoy!

And now I have been to the Leon restaurant as well. Bree and I went to the Leon restaurant behind the Tate Modern. The food we had was delicious! It was also very fast. We ordered a superfood salad, the recipe for which I had already marked as one to try. Yum! I can see many tasty meals ahead.