Today's easy kale recipe: For sweet little mini pizzas, just "doctor" a jar of a favorite spaghetti sauce with cooked kale, then top as you like. Super easy and surprisingly tasty. For anyone who wants to sneak healthy leafy greens into the family diet, mini pizzas are a great place to start. The sauce itself has virtually no calories at all and zero Weight Watchers points and is not just vegan, " Vegan Done Real ". And a Mini Kale Pizza? Under a hundred calories! For cookbooks that really "teach" and "challenge", my favorites tackle a single subject and explore it deep and broad. So it goes with KALE: The Complete Guide to the World's Most Powerful Superfood by Stephanie Pedersen. (DISCLOSURE KALE's publisher provided a complimentary copy but the thoughts, as always, are my own.) Stephanie's personal story is compelling. She was pregnant on 9/11 and was exposed to a "massive amount of toxins" which were passed ont

Today's vegan main dish or side dish, cooked either in a slow cooker or on the stovetop, an almost-creamy mix of chopped sweet potatoes and red lentils, spiked for a touch of heat with green curry paste. Just before serving, stir in roasted red peppers and fresh spinach. Just gorgeous, really. Low carb. Weight Watchers 3.5 or 5 points. A great choice for Meatless Monday, any meal of the day. Not just vegan but " Vegan Done Real ". This recipe is brought to you against all odds and prevailing winds. A "Pinterest Cook" No More I had such great confidence when the kitchen remodeling started. "I'll cook every day," I promised myself. Right. Within days, I turned into a "Pinterest cook" - that's someone who "cooks" by pinning one recipe after another without ever actually lighting the stove let alone chopping an onion. Then the other night, I couldn't sleep, my brain-on-busy overwhelmed by pesky kitchen details like, Wi

Today's new vegetable salad recipe: Mark Bittman's chopped salad recipe, the one from last week's New York Times, the kind of salad you can make every few days, adding and subtracting vegetables as you see fit. Healthy. Low carb. Low points. Not just vegan, " Vegan Done Real ". Michael Pollan's new book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation is on my read-soon wishlist. It rethinks our adventures in the kitchen, following four elemental ways of cooking. FIRE That's captured fire like a gas or electric stove or the open flame of wood fire. WATER That's boiling and braising. AIR That's baking. (Have you ever thought of an oven as just a small furnace? Me either.) It's also air-drying thin-thin layers of meat, say, as the Swiss and other Europeans do. EARTH That's the action of fermentation, whether cooking up some homebrew or making cheese. Peeling and chopping, slicing and dicing, these are the constants of a vegetable lov

Today's fun recipe for spring, a savory quick bread studded with artichoke hearts, olives and cubes of asiago cheese. Who else regularly falls down an internet rabbit hole? What, who me ? who you ? It starts so innocently, doesn't it? Just a mindless click of a finger, following a link or a Pin or a Facebook share, never realizing that ten minutes later, we'll look up, wondering, Now, where was I ? Acck. Our screen-filled lives make it so easy to get lost, to focus intently on something of momentarily great but altogether fleeting import. And then again, the rabbit hole can lead to cheese bread! A savory cheese bread, to be exact, plump with artichoke and if you like, olives too. Last week, I asked if favorite recipes should be added to my small collection of artichoke recipes . E-mail subscriber Louise Black wrote back right away, "We have visited Castorville, California (the Artichoke Capital) many times and eaten at the Giant Artichoke Restaurant there. They se

Today's easy breakfast recipe: Eggs cooked in a coffee mug in a microwave. Quick and easy and so very adaptable. Yes, mine includes veggies, spinach and red pepper. And for any naysayers? It's surprisingly good! Hey Vegetable Lovers, This recipe is dedicated to my sister's son Alex, my nephew, who turns 21 next week. If you have any quick and easy recipes that a young man should learn how to make, would you leave them in the comments? Links from bloggers welcome! Dear Alex, Forgive me, won't you, Alex, for remembering the sweet time when you and I first bonded? It was Thanksgiving Day and your mom and I were busy in the kitchen, stuffing the turkey, mashing the potatoes, stirring the gravy. Your seven-month self wanted attention! So I spent the day cooking with you in my arms: it wasn't efficient but it's my very favorite Thanksgiving memory. As you've grown older, Alex, your Generous Heart gets bigger and bigger, it's no wonder that at Stevi and To

Today's quick, healthy vegetable salad recipe: Wow. An easy, cheap, make-ahead and portable salad? A healthy, low-carb, low-calorie and vegan salad? All that AND absolutely ZERO Weight Watchers points? Like I said, W-O-W. Not just vegan, " Vegan Done Real ". Back in February, we turned ourselves into "snowflakes" and headed for Florida. (Snowflakes? Yes, snowflakes. Snowbirds head south for the winter. Snowflakes head south for a few days.) On the way back north, roadside stands beckoned: the "last" strawberries and the "first" tomatoes, the signs said. Still, I was dubious about the claim of local tomatoes. "Where are the tomatoes from?" I asked gently. "Are they from here?" "No! No!" said the woman with a shake of her head. "The tomatoes are from Immokalee!" ... that would be a town about 300 miles further south. Ha! Imokalee might not meet the "100 mile" standard for local food but in Feb

Today's easy veg(etari)an recipe for the slow cooker: Sloppy joes made with lentils instead of ground beef. Beautifully seasoned with pantry ingredients. Just a little bit spicy, easy to make it even spicier. Low carb. Weight Watchers 1.5/3 points. Not just vegetarian but vegan and not just vegan, " Vegan Done Real ". ~recipe & photo updated 2014~ ~ more recently updated recipes ~ I l-o-v-e food blogs. If truth be told, I follow hundreds a few posts at a sit-down, really reading, stopping to appreciate the photos, the stories, the curiosity and the expertise, the response of the community and yes, the recipes too. Following my fellow local St. Louis food bloggers is especially cool. I've met many face-to-face so catching the inside bits about special ingredients, shopping finds, neighborhood doings, life changes, it's like the best jigsaw puzzle. Our St. Louis food blogger Facebook page is less puzzle, more dutiful reporting of recent recipes. Most slip