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Tomato Platter with Olives & Feta ♥ An Easy, Impressive Summer Recipe

Today's vegetable 'recipe' - wait no, let's call it vegetable 'serving inspiration': A platter of perfect summer tomatoes, topped with olives and crumbled feta. Perfect for one or two or a crowd. My friend Mary brought a big plate of tomatoes to supper on Friday. I loved her tomato serving idea so much, I re-created it on Saturday! So this isn't so much a 'recipe' as a serving suggestion, for it really did work beautifully and flew together in minutes. Mary made a homemade vinaigrette (carrying it in a handy-dandy salad dressing mixer ) to drizzle over the tomatoes just before serving but I went a step simpler still by purchasing an olive-feta mix from the olive bar at the grocery store (where it's quick to pick up just a few olives for a salad or whatever), already moistened with a little olive oil and it was quite delicious already. Since ours was a small group on Friday, Mary also built 'stacks' of cucumber and thick beefsteak tomato,

Grilled Pepper & Tomato Salad ♥ A Reader Recipe

Today's vegetable recipe comes from a reader: Familiar tomatoes and familiar peppers combined in a salad that somehow manages to turn out entirely different. Low carb. Weight Watchers 2 points. Sold! It took about 10 seconds to buy into this recipe, sent by a reader just last week. Here's what Laurie B. wrote about her salad recipe that combines roasted peppers (bell peppers and hot chilis both) and roasted tomatoes: "It hits all my flavor sensors - heat, salt and garlic, well, tomatoes, peppers and onions. Oh wait, that's the recipe, isn't it?!" She went on. "It's easy to throw together and is so much more than its parts. I got the recipe from a neighbor (she said it was her mother's recipe) when it was served at their son's graduation party. I've never had anything like it and I'll bet I've made it a dozen times since then. We were taking a big bowl of it to a party and I asked my husband to taste a bit; he ate almost half of it

Julia Child's Cucumber Salad ♥ Recipe

Today's quick cucumber salad recipe, from no other than Julia Child: How to soak large, seedy cucumbers so they'll be not just edible but tasty! Low carb. Not just vegan, " Vegan Done Real ". Weight Watchers 1 point! ~recipe republished 2012~ to honor the 100th anniversary of the birth of Julia Child, a world-wide celebration happening online, in restaurants and in homes ~ more recently updated recipes ~ Summer 2009: Seems we can't turn around without stumbling over another story of Julie & Julia, the blog-turned-book-turned-movie that opens nationwide on August 7. Just yesterday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch climbed aboard the Julie & Julia wagon with a story about four St. Louis food bloggers whose blogs are also 'projects', including yes, A Veggie Venture! (Update, sorry, the Post-Dispatch has removed the online story but here's more about the bloggers in the story .) Summer 2009: Seems I can't turn around without stumbling over

Stuffed Peppers ♥ My Aunt's Retro Recipe

Today's vegetable recipe: My aunt's recipe for green peppers stuffed with a mixture of ground meat, fresh corn and rice or another starch such as quinoa, then topped with a tomato-y sauce and melt-y cheese. Low carb. Weight Watchers 2 to 4 points, depending on size. My 3x5 recipe box is gill-packed with 'retro' recipes that date to the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Thing is, the recipes weren't 'retro' then, not back when I copied ingredients and cooking instructions onto neat 3x5 index cards. They were just the recipes that my mother, my aunts and my older cousins were cooking. They were just recipes from good cooks feeding their families. They were just my family's best recipes, the family favorites, the ones we all loved. So it felt funny to make my dear Auntie Gloria's Stuffed Peppers again for the first time in many years. Today's 'whole food' cook in me was tempted to substitute the can of tomato soup her recipe calls for with, say,

Stacked Ratatouille ♥ A Fun Summer Recipe

Another hit recipe from our favorite cookbook this summer, Seven Fires by fascinating Argentinian chef Francis Mallmann. Appearance-wise, it's dramatic; preparation-wise, it's ever so simple. It's just sliced rounds of baked (and "burned"!) eggplant, tomato and summer squash, topped with a lemony spinach if you like. Works as well for one or two as for a crowd. Low Carb. Gluten Free. Paleo. Weight Watchers friendly. Whole30. Not just vegan, " Vegan Done Real ". Who remembers the 2007 movie Ratatouille ? I watched it again recently on a rare wet and chilly summer night, snuggling into the story as much as a warm blanket. It's a classic, just like the classic French dish called "ratatouille" which the movie brought into the mainstream. (And taught a whole generation, perhaps two, how to pronounce the word. Can you say rat-uh-TOO-ee?) It's a sweet pleasure, made for laughing out loud during a movie for two or in a theater with a crowd.

Raw Eggplant Salad ♥ Recipe

Today's unusual salad recipe: Small pieces of raw eggplant tossed with celery, olives and capers. Surprisingly pleasant! Vegan. Low carb. Weight Watchers 1 point. So. Can we eat raw eggplant? Yes! Do we want to eat raw eggplant? Yes again. The inspiration for this simple summer salad came from a few slices of eggplant leftover from another recipe, just hanging out there on the counter whispering, "Try us, try us, we'll taste great, maybe." They'd been dipped in nothing more than olive oil seasoned with salt and pepper. How would the raw eggplant taste? Good! The eggplant's white flesh is pleasantly spongy (definitely NOT mushy) and the skin provides great texture as well as color contrast. I do think that texture's especially important to consider when adding other ingredients, you don't want the whole salad to be soft, some crispness is important. I also suspect that the more-tender Asian eggplant is the appropriate choice here, versus the b

Pickled Beet Dip ♥ Easy Recipe!

Today's vegetable recipe: A quick and easy dip made with pickled beets, cream cheese and horseradish. Quite addictive, smeared on bread. Great color for outdoor gatherings. Low carb. No surprise that I loved this beet dip -- yes, when you collect beet recipes , people starting calling you the Beet Queen for good reason. But I didn't expect everyone else to love this beet dip -- but they did! The dip starts with a jar of pickled beets and whizzes up in the food processor in just a few minutes. It keeps too -- making it easy to make ahead and keep on hand for several days. Because you'll ask? Yes, the color is really truly that pink! THREE DAYS LATER: Brilliant! My friend Tanna from the Dallas food blog My Kitchen in Half Cups made this dip using homemade pickled beets and substituting canned beans for the cream cheese! She served the dip at a 'Little Bites' Dinner detailed in a post called, Pink, Purple, Red or Rouge . PICKLED BEET DIP Hands-on time: 10 minutes Ti