How to Cook (and Enjoy) Broccoli Stems

Broccoli is my husband's favourite vegetable and we eat it incessantly. But I can't stand the little dark, curly leaves. And I think the stems taste like ick.

Thankfully a recipe from Ellie Krieger's cookbook Weeknight Wonders has come to my rescue. I have learned how to cook broccoli stems so that they are delicious. Yippee!

There are just two tricks:
1. cut away all but the sweet, inner portion of the stem, and
2. make sure the stems get the most heat while cooking.

Carrot and Cashew Soup

I was intrigued by this soup recipe in which the cashews are blended into a carrot soup. It reminds me of things my vegan friends do. Cashews seem to do everything creamy in the vegan world. For example, my friend Michael blends it up to make cheese as the basis for cheesecake. Also, he blends up cashews with water and vanilla extract to make a cream for breakfast parfaits. Cashews can be made to make ranch dressing. So why not use cashews in soup? You don't have to be a vegan to enjoy new uses for an ingredient!

Courgette, Corn, and Tomato Sautee

Fresh corn looses its sweet flavour soon after harvesting. I read (in The Vegetable Bible) that corn is past its best only a few hours after it is picked. I guess this explains why frozen corn often tastes so good. It is frozen immediately after harvest, thus preserving both nutrition and taste.

Seaweed, Ginger, and Carrot Salad

After a recent knee injury, I have started taking swimming lessons. Until last October, I was a keen long-distance runner. Then I had quite a bad injury that put me on crutches for eight weeks. (I wrote about my first social outing with crutches here.) I'm still not able to run, though I have managed to cycle three times in the last few months.

On my physiotherapist's advice, I needed to take up a sport that has a lower impact on my knees. I never learned to swim as a child, so I have just started a series of lessons.

Edible Gift: Homemade Limoncello

Each year I make small, homemade gifts for Anthony's and my colleagues. One favourite is homemade limoncello, a simple lemon liquor. It was extremely easy to make, though it has to rest for a week, so if you want to make it, get started soon! All you need is lemons (organic, preferably), vodka, and sugar.

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.

Roasted Carrot and Garlic Dip

Carrots are my favourite vegetable and I even contemplated photographing this carrot dip with carrot sticks for dipping. Because that is indeed one of the ways I ate it! But for this photo, I made cucumber dippers. My friend Michael showed me how to cut cucumber on a steep diagonal to make perfect chip-sized dippers. I am always looking for more ways to make vegetables feel like a natural part of fun eating. Cucumber dippers and carrot dip are great examples of fun vegetables!

And so there is no need for chips and salsa at your next snack attack or movie night. If you are searching for ways to eat more vegetables, try this easy carrot dip with veggie dippers. It's also good with sweet pepper strips, celery sticks, or even rectangles of the ribs of Chinese cabbage. (I have tried this and it was superb!)

Earth Day 2014

Earth Day is coming up on Tuesday, 22 April! Have you decided how you will mark the occasion? I have a few ideas for you!

My friend and colleague, Michael Broadhead, publishes a cookbook which is updated with a new edition each Earth Day. I urge you to go download a free copy from his website.

Earth Day gives us a chance to think about how what we do affects the earth and what we can do to be better stewards of our world. One key way to do this is to eat less meat. Or no meat at all. I want to encourage you to try a meatless month or week. Many people do a once-a-week meatless day on "Meatless Mondays". Another idea is to restrict animal products to one meal or item a day. One popular version of this is often called "Vegan before 6pm".

This year I was honoured to be the first guest recipe contributor to Michael's recipe book! I have a page on which I share a delicious vegan recipe for frozen banana cream pie. But my recipe is not the reason you should download Michael's book. Here are the recipes that caught my eye that I'm sure you will like.

Mexican Tomato and Garlic Soup

Sometimes I feel as though I don't have a particularly innovative food item to share, but I just want to remind myself and others that it is OK to eat simply. This is one of those dishes that is stupendously easy. It feels strange to revel in its simplicity. But this soup is both simple and outstanding.

There were four of us eating on a plain, calm Saturday. We were just enjoying being together and having a good old chat. This soup and a salad were the lunch we sat down to together. And it fit perfectly into our ordinary day, while amazing all four of us with its richness of flavour. This soup's motto is "store cupboard staples turned to sunshine." It is made with ingredients you probably already have in the pantry and it will bring a warming dose of Mexican sun to the table.

Sparkling Ginger and Lime Crush

As part of Thanksgiving dinner, I made this easy drink. It's my first foray into making a "house cocktail". We also served other drinks, but everyone tried and enjoyed a glass of this sparkling beverage. It's markedly gingery with a hint of lime.

I made it with part plain water and part sparkling water (in about the ratio 1:3) to make it lightly sparkling. When sparkling drinks have too many bubbles, they just go up my nose and destroy my imbibing enjoyment. This ginger and lime crush is enjoyably bubbly.

Quick Pickled Okra

Today I was marking a piece of student work called "Patterns in Our Lives". The idea is that we see patterns all around us, especially in design features, and there are mathematical ways to describe the patterns. This got me thinking about the patterns I see in my life more generally. As I got up from my completed marking to make lunch, I realised that I eat a variety of foods, but very similar types of dishes and meals. For example, most of my lunches are a mainly a mixture of raw or lightly cooked vegetables. This pattern of eating makes me feel energetic after lunch.

Cucumber Salad with Cumin Vinaigrette

All last school year, every Monday I went to a group personal training session. A trainer came to work and a small group of us pushed ourselves through a punishing number of of press ups, burpees, TRX rows, and the like. I did this every Monday. Every Monday, that is, except one.

Chilled Cantaloupe Soup

Recently I've been inspired by reading magazines. For example, my local grocery store is called Cold Storage, and they publish a cheap quarterly magazine that is full of clever recipes. This chilled cantaloupe soup is from it.

But I like to read lots of magazines--almost any type are fine by me. I read sports ones about Formula One, running, or working out. I also like house and decorating magazines. I like essay magazines like Time, Monocle, and National Geographic. While in New Zealand on holiday in July I tried out a magazine called North & South ("the magazine for thinking New Zealand") which was very informative. And since arriving here in Singapore I picked up Time Out, of course.

Mint and Lime - a Perfect Combination

I have decided that I need to use lime and mint together more. They are a perfect pair. Think about mojitos, for example. They are just lime, mint, rum, and soda water. And they are delicious!

Spinach with Sesame Dressing

If you are looking for a quick side dish, look no further! This is officially the recipe with the shortest cooking time on this entire blog.

Let's play a guessing game. Look at this beautiful spinach with sesame dressing, adapted from a recipe by Donna Hay. How long do you think the spinach is cooked for?

How to Reduce the Sharpness of Raw Onions

I love raw onions but find they taste too strong. I feel as though their sharpness is just one notch too high for me. Thankfully there is an easy way to reduce the strong bite of raw onions slightly. And it only requires reordering your preparation steps.

Easy Braised Endive

Finding some endive at the grocery store was exciting! I have recently been wanting to try cooking it. Simple cooking is best for me - I don't have the patience to faff about too much. So I read up about cooking endive and distilled what I learned into the simplest tasty recipe.

Roasted Aubergine Dip

I am a veg-aholic. You may already know that I am in love with vegetables. That's why I started this blog. I think more people should become crazy veg-lovers! My main goal with this blog is to inspire other people to love vegetables - because I think they can be really versatile and delicious.

A lot of the people I meet have had bad experiences with vegetables. For example, have you tasted overcooked, mushy carrots with your school dinners? Or foul smelling boiled cauliflower, blanketed in bland sauce? There are some atrocious vegetable dishes out there!

Riced Cauliflower

This recipe is affectionately known as "cauli rice" in my house. It's a rice substitute that I eat all the time, most recently with beef chilli and chicken curry.

Cauli rice is very mild and neutral tasting - just like rice. It is just finely chopped cauliflower, pan-fried in butter until translucent or a little charred. It's a very simple backdrop to a spicier main dish.

Jackfruit and Durian Chips - Snacks from Thailand

I was in Thailand recently accompanying a school trip. One afternoon I tried these dried fruit chips from the hotel shop. I picked up two types: durian chips and jackfruit chips. Each packet cost me THB 40, which is about GBP 0.90 or USD 1.35. As I consumed my snack, I took tasting notes for you. Read on to find out more.