<< Today's simple zucchini salad recipe: A pretty combination of sunny-yellow yellow squash and summer-green zucchini, chopped and tossed in a lemony vinaigrette. Low carb. Weight Watchers 1 or 2 points. Not just vegan, " Vegan Done Real ". >> ~recipe & photo updated & reposted 2012~ ~ more recently updated recipes ~ 2006 Original Post: If the weather's not yet spring-ish, the food can be! Easily slipping the knife through the soft flesh of the green zucchini and yellow squash, I realized how remarkably different, how spectacularly simple, how wonderfully light and bright, this quick chopped salad seems — now — compared to the root vegetables that felt so perfect just a couple of weeks ago but now seem unappealingly heavy and earthy. Wool sweaters may be still in order. But not for long! We'll doff them — like parsnips and turnips — soon enough!

An easy beet salad, paired with toasted walnuts and dressed with a vinaigrette that starts with jam and brings out the natural sweetness of the beets. ~recipe & photo updated 2010~ 2010: This beet salad recipe was first published in 2006 on Day 347 for a food blogger event featuring 30-minutes meals. I used a Rachael Ray menu. It took 35 minutes to make the menu but I was astounded at the cost and the calories. The meal was expensive ($6.50 a person) and packed with calories (an enormous 1030 calories and 24 Weight Watchers points). (For anyone interested in all the detail, I've left it verbatim at the bottom of this page.) Even Rachael Ray's beet salad was loaded with calories. But MY version of the beet salad is light and lovely, entirely delicious and worth making. I like to make this as a main dish salad. BEET & WALNUT SALAD Hands-on time: 15 minutes Time to table: 15 minutes Serves 8 as side salads, 4 as main dish salads TOSS IN A SALAD BOWL 1/2 cup chopp

Happy Birthday to my Dad, who turns x0 next week! No, x0 is no typo. And x0 is an apt age, yes? for a much-loved father of a daughter perennially 29?! Dad's "birthday pie in the sky" is this wonderful blueberry galette, a quick dessert all dressed up in a fancy name -- and this week's Kitchen Parade column . (c) Copyright 2006 Kitchen Parade

Roasted beets are delicious -- though nothing novel enough for a food blog in its twelfth month dedicated to vegetables in new ways every single day. (In fact, roasted/baked beets made their first appearance way back on Day 24 . And roasting these beets, well, it's the first time to notice how A Veggie Venture is coming full circle, that we're about to move back into spring-ish vegetables, leaving the winter's roots and purees behind. I'm happy to welcome back favorites like beets and asparagus but it feels a little sad, too, an ending of sorts.) But fragrant roasted beets, now that caught my attention! (Yours too? You're reading, yes?!) But too-too-bad, the fragrance didn't permeate the beets. It didn't even "smell up" the kitchen, which would have been good enough on a wintry day. I tried star anise, fennel and lavender with three large (nearly one pound each) beets. (The star anise and fennel were suggested from the inspiring recipe from Th

A simple homemade celery soup, all about the celery and way more than the sum of its parts. Rave reviews! Skip the unnecessary cream and it's Whole 30 friendly. Also Gluten Free, Weight Watchers friendly and naturally, OhSoGood! ~recipe updated, first published way back in 2006~ ~ more recently updated recipes ~ Awhile back, I puzzled over a tidbit in a magazine. "To have fun," it asked, "would you prefer to go to a party with lots of old friends or one where you'll know hardly anyone?" Turns out that if FUN is the desired experience, then partying with new people is the ticket. (Okay, yes, I know, who can make such a generalization? and why is new fun better than laughing over old jokes? and were the folks who did the study, went to the parties and wrote the story all Extroverts in the Meyers-Briggs schema? and who reads this stuff anyway? Please, bear with me.) And so it's turned out that I've been cooking and writing about vegetables for

Every once in a lucky while, you find a cookbook that's entirely cookable. And if it's an entirely readable history lesson, too? Foodie Heaven. In 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark launched the great exploration of the new Lousiana Purchase. The food logistics alone were enormous: there were no Safeways, no Whole Foods along the traverse of the Missouri River. How and what DID they eat? Well and a lot, it turns out, very well and a whole lot. The Food Journal of Lewis & Clark by Mary Gunderson describes the expedition in terms of food, applying what Mary calls paleocuisineology -- bringing history alive through cooking -- to make a history book with recipes. "Welcome to the table of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The dining cloth reaches across the North American continent, circa 1803 to 1806. There is more than enough room for each of us to crowd around. Linger at any point in the journey and a rich food history is at hand, revealing the larger story of the E

Who's cooked cabbage so that it turns into something akin to, well, noodles? So good! But the recipe has moved to a new location, please see Cabbage Noodles at Kitchen Parade, my food column. Looking for healthy new ways to cook vegetables? A Veggie Venture is home to hundreds of super-organized quick, easy and healthful vegetable recipes and the famous asparagus-to-zucchini Alphabet of Vegetables . Join " veggie evangelist " Alanna Kellogg to explore the exciting world of common and not-so-common vegetables, seasonal to staples, savory to sweet, salads to sides, soups to supper, simple to special. © Copyright Kitchen Parade 2006 & 2021 (retire)