Sometimes the best place to get recipe inspiration is the farmers' market. I love strolling around on a low-key weekend morning and checking out what produce is in season, coming up with potential recipe ideas, and picking up some goodies to experiment with. San Diego area farmers' market are a foodie's paradise, because so much awesome produce is grown locally here - not to mention all of the amazing local purveyors around, including bread makers, nut butter producers, olive oil companies, bakeries... and the list goes on. Recently I got turned onto a local vegan crouton and cashew cheese company, and I've been sprinkling their products on everything! A few weekends ago, I was walking around the Vista Farmers' Market, and I kept seeing asparagus around. Since it's starting to be in peak ... [Read More]
pasta dishes
Pasta Shells with Easy Arugula Cherry Tomato Sauce [vegan]
Sometimes keeping it simple is the best. Every Easter when I was growing up - and really, almost every other holiday - my family would go over to my grandma's for a big family get together. I've talked about my amazing grandma before, but she loved to cook for everyone - and she pretty much always overdid it with how much food she made. There would be a ridiculous amount of dishes for everyone to enjoy. From a giant antipasto salad and homemade breads, to a gigantic spread for the main course, to probably half a dozen desserts, complete with her annual bunny-shaped Easter cake, my grandma always spent days preparing. She also always made me eggplant parmigiana because I loved it (and later on, I developed an allergy to it, probably from eating it too much!). One type ... [Read More]
Zucchini & Rigatoni Parmesan
When I first became a vegetarian, I was the only one in my family to not be a meat eater. My grandma, a little Italian lady who spends approximately half of her life in the kitchen cooking, used to say things like, "How are you going to find a boy if you don't eat meat? What are you going to make him for dinner or eat on a date?" [Side note: I somehow nabbed a really great guy eating salads on dinner dates and never cooking him a steak ;-) ] While she may or may not have understood my choice to go vegetarian, she always went out of her way to accommodate me with vegetarian eats, in addition to about 20 other dishes she would make for every family dinner. One of the things she used to whip up all of the time was eggplant parmesan. While I loved eggplant, I somehow developed an allergy ... [Read More]