~recipe & photo updated 2010~ 2005 Original: Hmm. So what makes this daikon-carrot combination so average when this Daikon & Pepper Salad was sooo good? Did last week's daikon have better taste or texture than tonight's which had been stored in the frig for a week? Not noticeably. Was last week's first-time-ever daikon new and exciting and tonight's same and humdrum? Not likely. Was it last week's white wine vinegar vs tonight's rice vinegar? Not likely. Was it last week's 1/2 tablespoon of oil vs tonight's no-oil? Not likely. Honestly, the only thing that makes sense is that the TEXTURE of daikon and pepper are a better match than the texture of daikon and carrot. Whatever it is, I'm still very high on daikon. Plus on the nutrition front, this salad is no-fat, low-calorie and low-carb -- so it's good on the healthful dimension. But next time, I'll make the Daikon & and Pepper Salad ! 2010: For a second time, I found th

Do pink 'n' purple peppers seem as foreign and inedible as say, hmmm, vegetarian and vegan cuisine? My new challenge is entice us all -- vegetarians and carnivores alike -- to expand our cooking inspiration into worlds previously unknown. (MeatHenge, I'm talking to you too, you cauliflower fiend , you! If you can eat cauliflower, you can go meatless ONCE in awhile!) How, you ask? Thanks to the kind invitation of Elise Bauer at Simply Recipes , I've joined an all-star team of contributing editors over at BlogHer , the brand-new happenin' place whose simple mission is to build new audiences for women bloggers. (Not just food bloggers, mind you, but Mommy & Family bloggers , Sex & Relationship bloggers , Politics and News bloggers , oh so many bloggers! My fellow editors and I are already busy posting highlights -- check out my posts and all our food and drink posts . And lady bloggers, be sure to check here to claim or add your own blog .) But I do

"The fennel is beyond every other vegetable, delicious. It greatly resembles the largest size celery, perfectly white, and there is no vegetable that equals it in flavor ... indeed I prefer it to every other vegetable, or to any fruit." - Thomas Jefferson, Garden Books (quote source, Vegetarian Celebrations ) Many thanks to NYC photographer Tara Harnad for permission to use her fennel photograph! In February 2006, A Veggie Venture and other food bloggers cooked our fill of fennel! This is a running round-up of the round-the-world fennel dishes we collected, terrific sources of inspiration, one and all! APPETIZERS Bagna Caoda from Cream Puffs in Venice SALADS Butterleaf Salad with Peaches, Grapefruit and Fennel Beautiful too, from Fresh Approach Cooking Fennel, Apple & Clementine Salad Includes detail on how to trim fresh fennel, from ToastPoint Fennel, Orange and Olive Salad from Something in Season Fennel and Cucumber Salad with Meyer Lemon Dressi

Even approaching 300 days (oh my, three HUNDRED days!) of cooking a vegetable in a new way every single day, A Veggie Venture has some holes. A big one -- one I aim to fix NOW -- is fennel. So in February, let's cook some fennel! (Care to join in? Any time during the month, let me know about a fennel post -- either a past post or a current one, even one that just uses fennel seed, since hey! I'm not that picky -- and I'll add it to a running round-up . Send the link via e-mail using akATkitchenHYPHENparadeDOTcom or by leaving a comment!) Tonight's oh-so-simple fennel suffered: it went into the oven with a whole chicken, on the upper rack which turned out to be too far from the heat source at the bottom. When the picture was taken, the fennel was only half done and hmm, let's call it 'chewy'. After another 30 minutes in the oven, it was buttery delicious. NUTRITION NOTES Fennel is high-fiber, low-calorie and low-carb. It's versatile too, great slivered in

No surprise that a veggie-loving cook follows the four seasons. Fresh tomatoes in winter? No way. Butternut squash in summer? Not on your life. Still, January warrants special thought when picking the month's favorites, the one soup and the one vegetable that together simply shout winter and holler holiday letdown. And sure enough, they do. Weight Watchers Zero Points Vegetable Soup Easy to make. Easy on the holiday-gorged palate. Life-giving vegetables. Low-carb and low-calorie. Zero points or one point in the Weight Watchers world, depending on how you count. Yup: perfect for January. Turnip Potato Puree Girds the winter soul for the remaining months of cold and snow. (In Missouri, where it's been in the 50s to the 70s in January, for heavens sake, northern sorts like me still live in hope.) January perfect. FROM THE ARCHIVES ... Find all ten months' Picks of the Months in the Recipe Box . (c) Copyright 2006 Kitchen Parade

Simple and good. And OH so fast. Just a little cooked cabbage (no sniffing! no up-turned noses! it's good!) with a little spinach pesto, what I call Winter Pesto , stirred in. A definite keeper. FROM THE ARCHIVES For other oh-so-simple vegetable sides, see here in the Recipe Box . CABBAGE with WINTER PESTO Bookmark or print this recipe only Hands-on time: 5 minutes Time to table: 20 minutes Serves 4 Salted water to cover 1 pound cabbage, cored and roughly chopped (would a bag of coleslaw-cut cabbage work? maybe, although the texture would be considerably different, and it only took 4 minutes to chop the cabbage) 1/2 tablespoon Winter Pesto (or a commercial pesto though the calorie differences are likely significant) Start the water in a medium saucepan over MEDIUM HIGH. (Don't forget to salt the water!) Add the cabbage as it's prepped, even before the water boils. Once the water begins to boil, cover, reduce the heat to MEDIUM and let simmer for about 15 minutes. Drain an

Today's Vegetable Recipe: Fresh spinach quick-cooked with onion, garlic, mustard seed & cumin. Weight Watchers 1 point. Low-carb. Vegan. ~ recipe & photo updated in 2008 ~ 2005: What an easy, healthful and unexpectedly delicious vegetarian supper! (Or of course, if preferred, vegetable side dish.) The recipe is inspired by Indian- and vegetarian-cuisine food blogger Mahanandi , whose simple vegetable dishes capture my culinary imagination. And, hey! in one dish, I've made a good start on two of my 2006 food resolutions . Not bad, eh? The hardest of those resolutions -- the one that always created a bad case of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) -- is hot peppers. But my fridge is now home to a pound of tiny Thai peppers, a couple hundred of them. I used two of those tiny little green guys tonight -- it's a start, yes! -- especially because I loved the underlying subtle heat, even if next time I'd probably use one pepper, not two. 2008: Once again, this easy spina