How to fall in love with radishes: Toss together a quick medley of chopped radishes and tomatoes brightened with olives, capers, parsley and lemon juice. Add canned beans for protein. Skip the oil. Swoon. Turns out, every year I fall in love with a new vegetable. In 2009, the unlikely addiction is the radish. For the last few months, radishes are such a staple that like lettuce and milk, they need no mention on the grocery list. Texture-wise, I've fallen in love with their crunch, taste-wise with that slight bite of radish pepperiness, visually with those clean white interiors framed by clear red skins. All winter long, one salad after another, radishes add a special oomph. Forgive me, but am I truly writing an ode to the radish? What crazy person creates room for radishes in her brain? Aren't they always an afterthought, never the star? In this quick 'n' easy lunch salad, the radishes do take center stage, they're what turn a bean 'n' stuff salad into somet

Today's vegetable recipe: An unusual side dish, a purée of a vegetable and a fruit, here parsnips and pears mellowed with cognac, sour cream and allspice. P arsnip P ear P urée. Say that three times, fast. Pppppp. Now join me in wondering how to make something that looks so plain -- it's just a blob of white stuff, right? -- look as pretty as it tastes. Perhaps a plump piece of pork perched upon top? and prepared for a party? Enough with the Ps. This stuff is good. It is also one of the most unusual savory side dishes I've ever tasted -- still, it's not 'weird'. (We know how people hate weird, right? Me too.) Mostly, you take a taste and wonder, What is that? Is it nutmeg? No, it's sweeter than nutmeg, something almost fruity. It's also a great way to use up a surfeit of pears, 12 pounds of bruised-looking but otherwise perfect fruits purchased over the weekend for $.89. Any ideas on what to do with the rest of those pears? PARSNIP PEAR PURÉE Hands-on ti

Today's recipe: Quick and easy black bean burgers, made at home with easy pantry ingredients. You can even freeze your own! For years, I have forsworn veggie burgers. (Ewww, the salty-slimy 'Garden' Burger? To my taste, more like a compost heap.) No more, no more!! I've been missing out, completely, because -- yay, rah! -- we can make homemade black bean burgers. And it's easy! And cheap! And -- this is the crucial test -- they taste great! And they pull together in a flash. And better than THAT? They freeze! Next time I'll make up a big batch, vacuum pack them with the FoodSaver , to have on hand, pronto, for a quick lunch or light supper. PS To the punctuation police blinking in disbelief about all the exclamation points? Try one of these black bean burgers, you'll be backflipping too. (!!!!) RECIPE for HOMEMADE BLACK BEAN BURGERS Hands-on time: 20 minutes Time to table: 20 minutes Serves 4 1 tablespoon olive oil 1/2 cup chopped green onion, roughly chopp

Today's vegetable recipe: Cauliflower roasted with saffron and spices. Low carb. Weight Watchers 1 point. So. I'm learning a lot about vegetables these days, though -- get this -- by eating , no tasting , no, positively hating oxtails. ( Note to Vegetarians ) It all started before Christmas when my friend Sharon had a recipe calling for oxtails and wanted to know what they were. My answer -- and I was wrong, to be sure -- was that oxtails were actually not the tails from beef cattle, even if the words made you think so, sort of like a rump roast is actually a shoulder roast. (Go figure.) But then last week, oxtail stew was on the tasting menu at a local restaurant and -- being an adventurous eater -- I placed my order, looking forward to a delicacy. But OH MY. YUCK.YUCK.YUCK. Now to be fair, the thinking is that the oxtails were no good, past their due date, shall we say. But with one bite, I was ready to gag and now, even nearly a week later, anything remotely close to unusua

Today's recipe: A quick snack or light lunch. Low carb. Weight Watchers one point. I may love to cook but I also love little-assembly-required quick lunches and snacks. They're not recipes, per se, more concepts. But I'm picky. Fast. Cheap. Quick. Easy. No dishes. Crunch. Fresh. Transportable. (And I think other readers must be hungry for such snacks and quick lunches too, as often as you check out my idea for a Satisfying Lunch in One Point .) Enter my latest obsession that combines two products that have been right there under my radar fuh-EVAH . I just love these little sandwich snacks! They're crispy and creamy and crunchy all at the same time. Finn Crisp Unlike most crackers, the ingredient list for Finn Crisp is short, just whole grain rye flour, water, yeast, salt and caraway. Wow! Whole grain and high fiber! No fat, no cholesterol, low sodium, with a little protein, too. Finn Crisp are easy to find in North America, I think, but prices vary widely. At the regu

Today's recipe: Tofu braised in a slow cooker in soy sauce, toasted sesame oil and other Asian-style flavors. Low carb. Weight Watchers 1 point for a snack, 3 points for a meal. Regular readers know that I'm prone to exclaiming, "Isn't it pretty?" ( See ?!) No chance of that happening here, with these mud-brown cubes of tofu. Ugh, how UNappealing. I couldn't bear for them to ugly-up a beautiful green salad. I wanted to leave them in the refrigerator to develop fridge-fur, justifying a fast trip to the rubbish bin. And then -- These ugly-ugly cubes called to me. Closing my eyes, I nabbed one cube, then another straight from the tupperware. They tasted great! And that's how Ugly But Delicious Tofu become my between-meal, protein-packed pick-me-up all this week -- now that's an eye opener. For portion control, I put aside three cubes measuring an ounce, otherwise I might have eaten the whole dish, all at once. Note the Escali kitchen scale which I pooh-

Today's vegetable recipe: A low-carb substitute for fried potatoes, turnips fried with onions and seasoned with cumin. Weight Watchers 1 point. Okay, so of course turnips aren't potatoes. But for those who either choose or must follow low-carb diets, call me surprised that to my taste anyway, fried turnips are a good substitute -- it just takes cooking them at high heat until they develop that golden-brown color and oniony flavor we so associate with fried potatoes, whether for breakfast (my downfall favorite) or for supper. These were great! Full disclosure: better good luck than good management! I learned about fried turnips only because the phone rang while cooking supper and soon enough -- oops -- the turnips were looking more than a little done. I feared they were lost but took one bite and whoah -- just kept on cooking. LOW-CARB FRIED TURNIPS Hands-on time: 15 minutes Time to table: 60 minutes Serves 4 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 large onion, chopped 1 pound turnips, trim