Like everybody else on the face of the earth, I’m ridiculously obsessed with Pinterest. Sure, I could do without the proliferation of twee inspirational quotes in interesting typefaces and living rooms that I’ll never be able to afford, but there is no better website out there right now for random dinner inspiration.

I saw this pin for baked spaghetti, and immediately knew that I wanted to try it. Cooper, like most three-year-olds, loves pasta, so I’m always looking for new recipes. This particular baked spaghetti recipe involves ground beef, which I don’t eat, and canned tomato sauce, which I don’t have. However, the best thing about pasta is that it’s infinitely customizable, so I took the basic idea and just went with it.

Baked Spaghetti

• 8 oz. Spaghetti
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1 can tomato sauce
• 1 diced onion
• 1 tbs Italian seasoning
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 cups mozzarella
• salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350. Cook your spaghetti according to package directions. Meanwhile, quarter your onion and dice it along with the garlic in the food processor. Put diced onion in a large bowl. Put diced tomatoes and italian seasoning in food processor and process until you get most of the chunks out. Add the tomato and spice mixture to the diced onion. Add tomato sauce and mix everything together. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add cooked spaghetti to sauce and stir, making sure to coat spaghetti evenly.

Transfer mixture into a greased baking dish. Sprinkle mozzarella on top and bake for about 30 minutes, or until the cheese is hot and bubbly.

Kid Tip: Since you’re using a food processor, this is a great opportunity to get some extra veggies into your kid without them noticing. Throw some baby spinach, zucchini, and/or broccoli in the food processor along with the diced tomatoes for some extra nutrition.

(Please … I know that top picture is horrible. Keith took it with his phone because the dish wasn’t all the way cooked until we got to my in-laws. As if we would have thought ahead and brought the camera….)

Every year, we celebrate Easter dinner with Keith’s parents. It’s always a lovely visit: Owen gets to play with his cousins, we all get to chat with Keith’s aunt and grandmother and we linger around the dining room table, wondering when the 37 people will arrive to help us eat the absurd amount of dessert that is crowding us.

This year, I was asked to bring a not-green-beans-or-potatoes-vegetable. It’s really rare that I cook just carrots as a side dish; they are usually part of a stir-fry or medley. But when I asked both Keith and Owen what vegetable they would like me to make, they both said, “Carrots!” So carrots it was. I had some leftover scallions in the fridge, so I immediately thought of using soy sauce in a glaze.

There are about a million soy-glazed carrot recipes floating around the internet. Some have honey, some have ginger, all sound delicious. I wanted mine to be a bit different. I used Rachel Ray’s recipe for honey-soy oven-glazed carrots to help with ratios and cooking times, then I went to town with my scallions, added some garlic for a bite and substituted agave syrup for the honey — all sprinkled with more scallions and some slivered almonds for crunch.

The best part is that these are gluten-free, since we used wheat-free tamari instead of soy sauce, and are very friendly for anyone who has issues with refined sugar. The only sugars that my son can tolerate are raw agave syrup, grade B maple syrup and palm sugar, and even those we use in very strict moderation. These carrots made everyone happy, and got rave reviews even from the folks who will eat anything (I’m looking at you, Rich).

Soy-Agave Glazed Carrots

Ingredients:

• about 12 carrots, peeled and cut diagonally into chunks
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup agave syrup
• 1/4 cup tamari or soy sauce
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 scallions, sliced, with green and white parts separated
• sliced or slivered almonds

Whisk together the olive oil, tamari, agave syrup and garlic. Toss with carrots and white parts of scallions. Arrange in an oven-safe pan and cook at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes, stirring every so often.

Sprinkle with green parts of scallions and slivered almonds before serving. I think sliced almonds would look prettier, but I didn’t have any in the house. You could also sprinkle with chopped fresh cilantro, parsley or basil … any of those herbs would be delicious.

It’s no secret I love muffins. I’ve shared my recipes for blueberry coconut muffins, oatmeal strawberry muffins, berry muffins sweetened with agave, Halloween orange muffins, banana coconut muffins, chocolate chip mini muffins, apple cinnamon muffins, raspberry oatmeal chocolate chip muffins, peachy flax molasses muffins and lemon poppy seed muffins.

Hmmmm … I wonder how all those chocolate chips got into the recipes? I guess it’s also no secret that I love chocolate….

Many of my muffin recipes are borne from us being completely sick of Keith’s pancakes … delicious, but tiresome every weekend. So as Owen and I were brainstorming ideas for muffins this morning, this is what “won.” The result is a fluffy, moist, flavorful muffin that you could easily make with cranberries instead of chocolate chips if you swing that way. I was thinking they’d taste great with both, but I was vetoed.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Ingredients:

• 1-3/4 cups spelt flour (or flour of your choice)
• 1/3 cup palm sugar (or sugar of your choice)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 3/4 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/3 cup oil (I used rice bran oil) or melted butter
• 3/4 cup chocolate chips (I used grain-sweetened)

Blend all dry ingredients in a large bowl, and mix all wet ingredients in a medium bowl. Add wet to dry and stir until just blended, then fold in chocolate chips.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 18 minutes. Serve warm, because you can, and why would you miss the opportunity for gooey chocolate chips?

Alternate version: Either substitute frozen or fresh cranberries for the chocolate chips and sprinkle Turbinado sugar on top of the muffin before baking, or use half chocolate chips / half cranberries.

Since I’m working from home again, I’m making an effort to find new things to cook and to figure out ways for Cooper to eat vegetables (2-year-olds apparently don’t like to do that. Who knew?). So last week, I made a trip to the grocery store to find new and exciting dishes to make.

Months before, I had downloaded a Simply Organic iPhone app, but hadn’t really used it. Now I have the time, so I decided to see what it had to offer. The first recipe I tested out was this Italian Egg Bake. They can call it whatever they want, but it’s basically a frittata. Regardless of the name, it screamed “EXCUSE TO USE LOTS OF VEGGIES” at me.

The best part about this recipe though is that it’s ridiculously quick to make. Granted, it has to cook for a long time, so it does require some forethought, but all you have to do is mix up a couple of ingredients in a bowl, stick it in a pie pan and put it in the oven. Done.

I had a few issues with the recipe: One is that the only seasoning called for is Italian dressing mix. That sounded kind of gross to me, but I decided to give it a whirl. It was actually pretty good! The other, was that it only called for 1/2 cup of veggies. That seemed to defeat the entire purpose for me, so I changed it to about 1/2 cup of each veggie: tomatoes, mushrooms, and asparagus.

It turned out great, and Cooper eventually ate it. I say eventually because when he first saw the triangle slice on his plate he went, “Pizza! Pizza!” As good as this egg bake was, when you’re a toddler who’s expecting pizza, it’s pretty much the worst thing ever. He had a couple of bites, but when we put a leftover slice in his lunch the next day for school, he ate most of it.

In any case, I certainly call this recipe a success. Plus, it’s a really good dish to make when you end up in a situation (as I so often do) of having leftover veggies that aren’t going to stay fresh much longer. Chop ‘em up and throw them in!

I’m definitely not into the vegan thing. Eggs are a gift from the food gods not to be squandered. But I will say those feisty vegan bakers and their recipes saved me when my kid was allergic to eggs in the first three years of his life. in fact, almost any recipe by Isa was a big hit in our house with anyone … not just the eggless. And I have a really mean extended family who’s not afraid to tell me when my cooking sucks.

One of our favorites is Isa’a chewy chocolate chocolate chip cookie recipe. I have a cousin who has specifically requested these cookies, so that’s very telling. For years, it was revered and I wouldn’t mess with it even a little bit (I’m such a liar … I never use canola oil, so I’d use butter, rice bran oil, or coconut oil). Lately, though, I’ve started messing for a couple of reasons.

I’m sort of off chocolate, in theory. I’ll eat a chocolate dessert now and then, but I’m proud to say I no longer hoarf down a handful of chocolate chips every time I pass the pantry closet. Yeah, I’m prouder than the mom of a round-headed newborn.

I really don’t like the kid to have too much chocolate either since caffeine and the under-6 crowd of bad sleepers really don’t mix. We’ll try anything, even tricking him.

And now we’re back at the messing. A couple of weeks ago, I made Isa’s recipe with half cocoa powder and half carob powder. No one could tell, so I started getting crazy. I added, substituted and made the recipe mine, all mine. And in my house, anyway, we think it’s better.

It’s healthier, super-delicious but still “normal.” I held myself back from adding pureed spinach, but used the most nutritious unrefined sugar I could find, used coconut milk instead of soy milk and some of the oil and this and that until it fit my specs for healthy. Try it and see what you think.

Carob Chocolate Chip Cookies with Coconut and Cranberries

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup rice bran oil + 1/4 cup coconut milk
• 1 1/2 cups palm sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon whole flax seeds
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 2 cups whole spelt flour
• 3/4 cup unsweetened carob powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup grain-sweetened chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup fruit-sweetened dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut flakes (optional)

Grind the flax seeds in a blender until they become a powder, then add the 1/2 cup of coconut milk and blend more, until the mixture thickens a bit and gets gooey.

Meanwhile, mix flour, carob powder, baking soda and salt together in a separate bowl.

Using a mixer (yes, Isa, I’m willing to lose the punk points), cream together the oil + coconut milk and the palm sugar, then add the flax mixture and vanilla and keep on mixing until mixture is almost fluffy.

Slowly add the dry ingredients while mixer is set to low speed. Blend well then stir in chocolate chips, cranberries and coconut.

Plop onto greased cookie sheets and make semi-pretty circles almost 2 inches around, slightly flattened in the middle. These do rise and expand, so leave at least an inch between cookies.

Bake for 10 minutes, let cool for 10 minutes on the pan and then cool the rest of the way on wire racks.

Cooper just turned two, so it stands to reason that he’s obsessed with Elmo. Elmo, after all, is the Muppet equivalent of Cheerios, AKA “baby crack.” There’s something primal about babies’ love for both of these things that I simply do not understand (although I do think that Elmo’s World is a perfect example of absurdist humor, but that’s a different post for a different time). So when it was time to figure out Cooper’s birthday cake, Elmo immediately came to mind.

This was going to be for the big party; the one to which we invited all of the kids from his daycare, so naturally I wanted to do something special. I decorated my first cake for his birthday last year, and was quite happy with the way it turned out. However, I’m certainly not an artist, so I needed to find something that was basically “cake decorating for dummies.”

I searched online and came across this design for Elmo cupcakes on amazingmoms.com. Amazing mom? That’s what I want to be! It seemed pretty simple: red frosting, white Necco wafers, black icing, and orange gumdrops. They say to use a licorice strand for the mouth, but I decided to just use the black decorator icing that I was already using for the eyes. Plus, I couldn’t find orange gumdrops that weren’t gigantic, so I used orange jelly beans instead. The recipe does mention using gel food coloring in order to get a true red, so I made sure to get some.

Unfortunately, that’s where the train went off the track. My friend Elizabeth came over to help me out, as she knows that I tend to melt down when faced with artistic baking endeavors. In addition to some wine (a key ingredient when trying anything new), she brought over some decorating bags, tips, and some Wilton food coloring gel. Here’s the thing though: that business did not turn red. Instead, the icing turned a crazy Barbie hot pink. We added more and it just became darker pink. We added blue, and it just turned a lovely shade of mauve. WE CAN’T HAVE MAUVE ELMOS!

After spending close to an hour playing food-coloring alchemists, I made a last minute late-night run to the grocery store. I returned with red decorating icing– the kind that comes in a can and has a few different decorating tips. It looked kind of gross, but it was 11:00 and I was desperate. The plus side: It was red. Unfortunately, I was only able to get 11 cupcakes out of it.

The end result, at nearly 1 AM and after several glasses of wine between the two of us, was 11 red Elmos, 1 sad mauve Elmo, and two dozen lame mauve cupcakes. Some would call this a failure, but the next morning, when Cooper was sitting on my lap as I loaded the photos onto my computer, he saw the pictures and squealed, “Elmo!” And that, my friends, is a big win.

I may not be writing much these days, but our CSA farm’s harvest has been so plentiful this season that I’ve been busy blanching and freezing green and yellow beans, making salsa from the Roma tomatoes and making and freezing fresh tomato sauce for this winter. Oh, there have been some batches of my easy lentil vegetable soup in there as well, and now I’ve got a new recipe for minestrone soup to share with you.

My friend Laura and I have mastered the art of the “found” lunch. Every so often we have a lunch playdate and we each just bring what we’ve got and we end up with a spread fit for a king — or at least two five-year-olds and their moms. Homemade hummus, veggies sticks, fresh fruit, homemade bread and raw seed wafers are often on the menu, and last week when we met at Laura’s house, she had some fresh, homemade minestrone soup to share with us — made from her CSA farm harvest.

When we got back from the farm this weekend, we were quite overwhelmed by the amount of food we had. I was prepared to cook up a huge batch of my favorite lentil soup (again) when Keith asked me if there was a green bean soup recipe we could do. I immediately thought of Laura’s minestrone, chock-full of green beans, and thought I’d take a stab at my own version of minestrone — a soup I’d never made before.

I popped by Food Network’s website to see when to add the pasta and one other little tip caught my eye: In their version of minestrone soup, they mash half of the kidney beans to make a thicker, more flavorful broth. Yes please! So I stole that idea and gleefully mashed my kidney beans. The rest is all me — I swear!

Minestrone My Way

Ingredients:

• 2 onions, diced
• 7 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 zucchini, diced
• 2 carrots, diced
• 3-4 cups green beans, cut into 1-inch segments
• 4 tomatoes, diced
• 1 can kidney beans, rinsed and drained, and mash half the beans
• 8 cups water
• 2 tablespoons Better than Bouillon veggie base (or thereabouts)
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• freshly ground pepper to taste
• 1/2 pound pasta (I used brown rice penne)
• about 4-6 kale leaves, chopped into 1/4 – 1/2 inch sections
• 3 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
• parmesan or pecorino romano cheese, freshly grated

Heat some olive oil in a large pot and saute the onion and garlic until fragrant, about one minute. Add the carrots and zucchini and cook until tender, about five minutes.

Next, add water, Better than Bouillon, tomatoes and green beans and bring to a simmer. Add the pasta and simmer for about 10 minutes. Toss in herbs and seasoning, kidney beans (mashed and whole) and kale and cook until heated through. Add parsley and remove from heat.

This soup is designed to be served with lots of freshly grated pecorino romano or parmesan cheese. If you plan to veganize it — gasp! — you might want to add a bit more of the Better than Bouillon to compensate for the lack of salty cheesy goodness.

After I finished laughing at the fact that zucchini pie exists, I really looked at the recipe and it sounds absolutely delicious. Oh, are you wondering why zucchini pie is hilarious? That’s what we tell Owen is for dinner when he’s pestering us, because one of the few things he doesn’t like is zucchini. Although lately he’s been eating it….

These banana flax cookies intrigue me, since they call for teff flour (something I’ve yet to experiment with) and flax seeds stirred in whole. When I usually bake with flax seeds, I grind them into a meal first. One thing I can tell you about this recipe, after making billions of banana cookie recipes, is that you really don’t need 3/4 cup of sugar added. I’d use 1/4 cup of palm sugar, max. Oh, the other cookies, you ask? I’ll share my originals with you:

• Almond butter oatmeal banana cookies
• Banana oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

Chef Dad had us for dinner a bit ago and he made us some salmon with a blueberry sauce. His didn’t have balsamic vinegar like this grilled salmon with quick blueberry sauce, but the recipe reminded me of his blended with the berry sauce that we do for lamb. I’ll be trying this one very soon!

It’s hard to believe that summer is almost over. Hopefully the weather will stick around long after September first, the day Owen starts kindergarten. I’m not fretting too much about it, since he’s only going for a half day — one that’s shorter than his preschool day. That’s right, folks — my son will be released for the day at 11:05.

Even though he doesn’t have to bring a lunch yet, I’m always looking for fun lunches to keep him eating colorful and nutritious foods. I’ve hit the jackpot this week, because Parenting magazine knows what’s hot — bento box lunches.

Mother of God, this is lunch on steroids. Once I got past the fact that it’s probably not as easy as tossing an almond butter and jelly sandwich together, I realized that they really would be fairly quick and simple to do, especially because the creativity part is taken care of if I use Parenting‘s ideas. I can chop, right?

Some ideas I will definitely steal — I’ve got to remember how sticking anything on a toothpick makes it taste better. Well, it does when you’re five years old. The edamame stacked on a toothpick looks so damn cute. If I ever pack him chicken nuggets, hot dogs or the like, I’ll stick the ketchup right inside of it — that’s handy. And I can’t credit Parenting with this one, but I’m on that hot dog octopus pictured above like white on rice.

What seems easy — I can definitely cut lunch meat into strips and loop it to look pretty, like they did in almost every box, and I can even get a few cute cookie cutters to make shapes out of veggies. And I can chop — did I mention that already? And, my kid already likes homemade sushi, so I can do a traditional bento box for him too.

Problems — Some of the fancy folded sandwich pieces, like the bunny’s ears and the flower petals, won’t work with the sprouted bread we use, which is more crumbly than bread made from wheat flour. Yeah, that darned gluten is good for some things, I guess. I’m also thinking that using rice and quinoa, although adorable, just wouldn’t get eaten. If my kid has 15 minutes to eat with a gaggle of friends and needs to use a fork, it ain’t happening.

I can definitely work with these ideas to make fun lunches. I’m inspired — how about you?

We don’t eat like a normal family, so sugary lemonade is never an option in our house. We don’t buy popsicles because of the sugar and dye, so we make our own. Ditto for ice cream. I was thrilled to find these recipes that will add some new variations to our homemade healthy versions of these summer stand-bys.

I’ve been meaning to experiment with stevia, and I even bought some stevia powder this week. So it stands to reason that this recipe for sugar-free lemonade calls for liquid stevia … yeah. I usually use agave syrup when I make lemonade but I definitely want to try this.

These raspberry and peach popsicles sound absolutely delicious … but I’ll admit they are much more complicated to make than my usual lemon juice, water and agave pops. I hope I’ll forgo laziness and give them a try because I think I’d enjoy these as much as the five-year-old.

I’m completely sold on strawberry coconut milk ice cream and I’ve been reading about frozen banana soft serve. This recipe for better than ice cream seems to combine the best of both for a healthy and fruity frozen dessert.

What are some healthy summer treat recipes you make?

I’ll be the first one to admit that not every gluten-free dessert is a taste sensation. Oftentimes, they are dry and crumbly, bland and blah. That was not the case with the raspberry almond torte I baked tonight, though.

We cooked for my parents today, mostly just because but also because they took such good care of the cat while we spent a few days at the beach a couple of weeks ago. It was a really wonderful meal that we kept simple so that we could just enjoy being together and not spend the whole day in the kitchen (the grill … oh, how I love a grill meal).

I finally made the crushed pea spread that I’ve been drooling over for weeks and I was right to drool so shamelessly — the combination of sweet peas, goat cheese, tahini, lemon juice, fresh mint and scallions was perfection. I served it with baguette and fresh radish slices and shaved pecorino romano cheese.

For dinner, we marinated a black angus flank steak in an orange soy marinade, grilled some romaine hearts and red potato slices and served some green and yellow beans with poppy seed dressing alongside the grilled mishmash.

Instead of making my go-to zucchini chocolate chip cookies, I was torn between the orange almond flan and the raspberry almond torte for dessert. So you’ve read the title of this post and know which dessert came out the winner, but what I haven’t yet told you was just how delicious it was. We served it with some homemade vanilla coconut milk ice cream with a good portion of Greek yogurt blended in … divine. Here’s the clincher — my dad, my very hard-to-please, dessert-hating chef of a dad said that he could have eaten the entire half of the torte that was left over. That, my friends, is better than the five-year-old seal of approval (which, by the way, I also got in spades).

Now don’t go reading anything Freudian into this. If any of you know me (including my dad who’s probably reading this only because my mother forwarded to him), you know that seeking my father’s approval has never been a big priority for me. I was the fresh, defiant kid (I know, hard to believe) who would go toe-to-toe with my hot-tempered dad when the other siblings would run for the hills to avoid the frothing spittle spewing from his lips. Thankfully, he’s mellowed a lot since then and so have I, and although I’m happy my dad enjoyed the torte, I would love it no matter what.

It was very easy to make, it’s gluten-free and has very little sugar in it (and even then it’s unrefined sugar and maple syrup) and it’s almost pretty. Sure, it could have done with a layer of chocolate (couldn’t everything?) but it was a relatively awesome dessert that topped off this summer meal perfectly. Don’t hold its gluten-free vegan-ness against it — it’s a wonderful torte.

I love how the best recipes are sometimes borne of desperation. I forgot to take something out of the freezer and then on the way home from the CSA farm, I forgot to stop to grab some meat. Since the men (OK, the boy and the man … or should I just say the boys?) don’t really think it’s a meal unless there’s a dead animal on the plate, the idea of a vegetarian meal was not well-received.

Enter the desperation, because all I had was some canned salmon left over from sprinkling on my salad for yesterday’s lunch. I also had some ground spices that Keith didn’t use up the other night when he made a crust for grilled salmon (he swears he’ll post the recipe test drive). Add some fresh cilantro, this and that and salmon cakes that were good enough to serve in a restaurant magically appeared on my family’s plates.

Salmon Corn Cakes

Ingredients:

• about 1/2 pound salmon (I used canned wild Alaskan salmon with skin and bones)
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander, cumin and sesame seeds (mixed)
• 1/2 cup corn kernels
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 tablespoons corn meal

For the sauce:

• 1/2 cup plain yogurt (whole milk organic)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Mix the ingredients for the patties in a large bowl. This was absolutely the perfect ratio for us, but if you need more liquid, add a bit of lemon juice. If you need more texture to keep the patties solid, add more corn meal.

After mixing well, form into patties (it made 4). Cook over medium low heat in an oiled skillet until both sides are browned, flipping once during cooking.

Meanwhile, whisk together the yogurt and the lemon juice and serve sauce with the patties.

You could definitely add some chopped onion to the patties and some raw garlic to the sauce — I’ll do both of these things next time.

Granted, the five-year-old squeezed ketchup all over his patty and ate it with his hands, but he loved it and it was the first thing gone from his plate. This says a lot since it was served alongside this potato salad, potatoes being the most revered food in the universe by the spud-worshiping child I am raising.

Sometimes Keith is hard to tame when it comes to breakfasts. It’s not his fault; he loves to make pancakes every Saturday morning and every vacation day imaginable and sees himself as the breakfast master chef. I find it rather endearing when he takes charge of the kitchen, but when he wants to pack up all the ingredients for gourmet pancakes and try to make them in an efficiency kitchen in a small beach rental, I have to put my foot down.

When we go away for four days, I just don’t see why we have to have a different breakfast each day. Honestly, can we just keep something simple in this family? I took matters into my own hands and used up the blueberries in the fridge and made a blueberry buckle the day before we left, so we could take it with us and have a yummy breakfast every day.

Inspired by this blueberry buckle recipe, my recipe makes changes that suit our family’s needs and just taste good. I combined my usual sprouted spelt flour with some arrowroot to lighten things up a bit and help the cake be less crumbly. Success! I also cut back the sugar, substituted palm sugar and pumped up the crumb topping.

This was one amazing blueberry buckle. Let me explain to you in five-year-old terms just how wonderful this cake was — Owen requested that I make this cake for his birthday. His birthday, people! The kid doesn’t want a gooey cake dripping with day-glo frosting … he wants a blueberry buckle! Either the kid’s got taste or he’s as weird as his mother, or the blueberry buckle was that good … make it and you be the judge!

Blueberry Buckle

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup palm sugar
• 3 tablespoons organic unsalted butter
• 1 extra-large egg
• 1 1/2 cups sprouted spelt flour
• 1/2 cup arrowroot flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• 3 tablespoons whole milk plain yogurt
• 2 cups fresh blueberries (other berries can be substituted)

Crumb Topping:

• 1/4 cup palm sugar
• 3 tablespoons sprouted spelt flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons organic unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan. Add 1/3 cup palm sugar, 3 tablespoons butter and an extra-large egg to a large mixing bowl and beat on medium to blend well.

In a separate bowl, mix together the spelt flour, arrowroot, baking powder and salt. Add half of the flour mixture to sugar mixture in mixing bowl, along with half of the milk. Repeat with remaining flour and remaining milk and yogurt, beating just until blended.

Stir in the blueberries gently with a mixing spoon and pour into prepared pan.

For topping, add 1/4-cup palm sugar, 3 tablespoons flour, cinnamon and 2 tablespoons butter to a small bowl and blend with a fork. Sprinkle crumb mixture over the cake batter, breaking the crumb mixture into small pieces with your fingers if necessary.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until texture seems firm in the center of the cake. Serve warm or cold.

I’m having flashbacks of this cake that can only be described as obscene … is it wrong to lust after a breakfast food with such fervor?

A friend of mine recently started a raw food diet, and when I got the opportunity to split a case of kelp noodles with her, I jumped at the chance. Trying a new food is a beautiful thing, and when it’s this healthy for you, it makes it all the more exciting. No-carb noodles with all the nutrition of a sea vegetable and can be served like your favorite pasta? Yes, please.

They are so easy to use too — just rinse and plop in your recipe. You can heat them through, as I did here or just use them cold or room temperature. I’m not sure there’s a wrong way to eat kelp noodles. There’s another positive — they’re a forgiving food.

Speaking of forgiving … I ate “pasta” and didn’t leave the table bloated — score!

We bought some salmon to eat with the kelp noodles, so I went with some flavors I love combining with that flaky, oily, heavenly little pink fish — garlic, ginger, miso, lime juice, sesame oil. The recipe just created itself from there (based on what I had in the house) and this nutritious, vegetarian dish was born.

Kelp Noodles with Almond-Miso Sauce

Ingredients:

• 12-ounce package of kelp noodles
• 1 huge broccoli floret, chopped
• 1/2 an onion, chopped
• sesame seeds for sprinkling
• red pepper flakes to taste
• 2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped

For the sauce:

• 2 tablespoons almond butter
• 1 teaspoon miso
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 teaspoon sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon lime juice

Saute the broccoli and the onion until tender and golden. Add the kelp noodles and heat through.

Meanwhile, whisk all of the sauce ingredients together.

Add the sauce to the broccoli and kelp noodle mixture and quickly heat through. Remove from heat and sprinkle in sesame seeds, cilantro and red pepper flakes.

The less you heat the noodles, the more you’ll probably like them, at least that’s what we found. They are pretty wonderful no matter what, but the longer you cook them, the more rubbery they become, whereas fresh from the package they have a delightful crunch. (The five-year-old called it a “pop.”)

Owen, by the way, loved these noodles (you’ll notice the dot of sauce on the tip of his nose — consider that proof), and if you’re a savvy parent, you won’t cut them to your desired size as the package suggests. No, your desired size will be the long, slurpy strings that make your kid grin from ear to ear.

As I was dumping the ingredients for these brownies into my food processor, making this recipe for the first time, I was thinking to myself, “This may be the grossest dessert I have ever attempted. OK, maybe not the grossest. That would have to be the carob avocado banana pudding, which actually isn’t half bad.

People, I have hit rock bottom. This recipe doesn’t come from a place of healthy love for all foods good for you — I am desperate. Keith and I have given up caffeine, chocolate and white sugar for a couple of months to cleanse and I’m flippin’ hungry. Sure, I’ve lost five pounds and quite frankly look fabulous in my summer clothes, but I’m not sure the trade-off is worth it … I’m wasting away, I tell you!

I jest a little because I honestly don’t miss my nightly dose of chocolate as much as I thought I would, though I do wish I could have the occasional special treat. Enter these black bean brownies. Now, I’ve been making a recipe similar to these black bean brownies for years, but this recipe was a little bit different. It caught my eye because there were bananas in it, which cut back the amount of sweetener by over a cup from my other recipe.

I had to change things up a bit, but there was no time like the present to try, since Owen is going to a birthday party tomorrow and he can’t eat the cake with all his food allergies. Believe it or not (I’m still in awe), what I came up with works. It really works. I’m not feeling like I’m eating a second-rate dessert (the cinnamon is brilliant!) and they just looked so pretty when I took them out of the oven that I almost don’t care that they don’t stay together very well after you cut them.

Black Bean Carob Brownies

Ingredients:

• 15-ounce can black beans, rinsed and drained
• 2 whole bananas
• 1/4 scant cup of agave syrup
• 1/4 cup carob powder (or cocoa powder if you’re not cleansing….)
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon (brilliant, I say!)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup almond flour
• 1/2 cup carob chips (any other day I’d use grain-sweetened chocolate chips)

Preheat oven to 350. Grease an 8×8″ pan and set aside. Combine all ingredients except the carob chips in a food processor and blend until smooth, scraping sides as needed. Stir in carob chips. Pour batter into the pan. Bake about 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool before slicing. (This is very important. If you try to slice them too soon, they don’t hold together.)

A few notes:

• Store them in the refrigerator after cooling, and cut them when chilled if you don’t want them falling apart on you. They still taste good, but tricky to bring to a party.
• They are mushy, so the chips are a great addition and I’d even throw in some roasted, chopped almonds next time.
• The cinnamon is brilliant — have I mentioned that yet?
• A dollop of coconut milk ice cream sprinkled with granola would top these brownies perfectly.
• The taste is a huge hit with the men in the house, and anyone who likes banana desserts will adore these.

Let me be clear — this is not my favorite dessert in the world, but it satisfied my craving and was pretty yummy. Not perfect, but just what we needed.

UPDATE: My men will not stop going to the refrigerator and snitching from the pan of these brownies. They obviously like them better than I do, or I am not the desperate woman I thought I was….

Would you get a look at that creamy goodness? We make ice cream fairly often, partly because we’re careful about our refined sugar and dairy intake but mostly because it’s fun to stand at the ice cream maker with a spoon and snitch as it’s churning. We’d never tried a strawberry ice cream before and now that we have I can’t imagine why it took so long!

Our CSA farm’s strawberries came in early this year — hooray! — so we picked a bunch of luscious ripe berries this weekend. They were so sweet and ripe, they weren’t going to keep long enough for us to just eat them out of the container. So we made ice cream!

A few notes about this recipe: It’s very close to our pumpkin coconut milk ice cream with a few alterations. I was going for creamy — you know, strawberries and cream — so I added some strained Greek yogurt and I really like the way it blends with the coconut milk. Too much yogurt and it would be too sour for my tastes, so don’t be tempted to add more than the recipe calls for unless you’re prepared for a little tang with your sweet.

You know how homemade ice cream gets really hard after you put it in the freezer? One thing I really like about this recipe is that it didn’t until a couple of days later. I think the creaminess of the yogurt combined with all the sugar in the strawberries helped with that. If you still think it gets too hard too fast, add a shot of some strawberry liquor.

Our berries were dripping with sweetness, but if yours are more tart, feel free to add more agave syrup until it’s just the way you like it.

Homemade Fresh Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients:

• 1 can coconut milk (14 ounces)
• 1/2 cup Greek strained yogurt, plain (I used 2% because no markets in my area see fit to carry the whole milk version)
• 3 tablespoons agave syrup
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 cups freshly picked strawberries

In a medium bowl, mash the strawberries with a fork, then whisk in the other ingredients. Dump into your ice cream maker and grab a spoon … in about 10 minutes, you can start snitching while the ice cream churns….

Is it wrong to be tired of black bean dip and hummus? OK, I guess I really love hummus, but I just didn’t feel like making it when I knew I’d be entertaining this weekend. What can I say — I longed for a different legume.

I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d do with a kidney bean dip, so it was Nigella Lawson to the rescue, and boy did she win the medal of honor for most heroic dip save of May 2010. Her red kidney bean dip was exactly what I was looking for — not Middle Eastern, not Italian and not Mexican, this dip had a personality all its own.

And not only was the taste perfect, but the recipe was perfection in and of itself. I didn’t change a thing (which never happens) and I made a couple of batches at different times and they both came out divine. I was tempted to take a shortcut and just use lime juice and skip the zest — you really, really don’t want to do that. The zest adds such a perfect finish to the dip, it’s worth the trip to the store to buy real limes.

The thing is, it’s a really simple recipe with very few ingredients. I don’t admit this often, but this time, it’s all about technique. Most dips, I just chuck everything into the food processor, blend and serve. Instead, this recipe has you cook the onions, garlic and eventually add the beans and spices as well. The cooked onions add a hint of sweetness, when coupled with the cinnamon and the lime juice almost trick you into thinking you added sugar or the like.

The one thing her recipe doesn’t specify is what to serve it with, but I chose organic yellow and blue corn chips and scored. Not sure that crackers, veggies or bread would make the perfect pair that this dip and corn chips did. The salty corn chips play off the pseudo-sweetness of the dip and you wouldn’t want it any other way.

It was a hit with both crowds that I served it to, and the only reason I had to make the second batch was because I couldn’t keep the husband and child out of it to save it for the next day. When a five-year-old emphatically proclaims, “This is so delicious!” then you know you’ve got a good thing going.

Thanks Nigella, for a simple, innovative dip that wasn’t made with chick peas or black beans.

Last year, I woke up on my first Mother’s Day, got up, made my own coffee, did laundry, and cleaned the downstairs for the guests we had coming over after brunch– not exactly what I had in mind for that morning. It’s a year later, and Luke has not heard the end of it. The point of this is two-fold: One, I’m nervous about what’s going to happen this Sunday, and two, DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU.

Breakfast in bed is where it’s at, people. If you have a special mother in your life, get on that. Seriously. Even if you have a big thing planned that day, she will be thrilled with the opportunity to spill coffee on her comforter, or drop her cell phone in the mug. Not that any of these things have happened to me, of course. Mother’s Day isn’t about expensive gifts. It’s about toast, juice, and seeing your child’s smiling face. Preferably from afar. Kidding! (not really).

Here are a few ways to make mom realize you care this Mother’s Day:

• Creme Brulee French Toast – Nothing says, “I love you and appreciate all the hard work you do,” more than acknowledging how you drive her to drink. It’s breakfast with Grand Marnier! Nothing beats that.
• Asparagus, Spinach and Feta Frittata – Tell mom that you respect her need for time by herself by pumping her full of asparagus and garlic first thing in the morning. That 5-foot barrier between you will give her the peace and quiet she so desperately craves.
• Champagne Breakfast – Maybe you can’t afford to send mom to a fancy hotel where she can sit around in a white robe and order room service. You can at least recreate the experience with this champagne breakfast. Muffins, fresh fruit, and sparkling wine. It’ll take her back to a time before  6 am wake-up calls and, “Okay, you eat while I take the baby outside. Hurry up. No, seriously. I’m hung– honey, no. Stop biting mommy. Honey!”
• Toast and Coffee – No link for this, because it’s literally toast and coffee. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you do. Sure, she’ll appreciate a fancy breakfast (not to mention the booze), but it’s really about taking the time to let her know that spending 40 weeks baking a kid inside of her means something to you. Whether you’re extravagant or simple, the fact that you care is really all that matters. Also, sleeping in– but mostly the caring.

Owen doesn’t ask for much food-wise. When you come right down to it, the kid will eat almost anything that isn’t in the squash family (though we have recently found that if you braise zucchini in a lemongrass coconut sauce, it becomes heaven in a five-year-old’s eyes) so meals are pretty easy around here. When he asked for “that rice with the egg in it” this week, I knew I had to cook up a batch of fried rice for him.

But this post isn’t about the fried rice (which in our house consists of whatever’s in the fridge and some eggs with tamari stirred in … if you want a real recipe, Pia’s pork and shrimp fired rice or Jeff’s grouse fried rice are what you’re looking for) — it’s about the garlicky Asian cabbage that I made as a side dish.

There’s this marvelous little Thai place down the street from us whose signature dish is the Yoong Tong special noodles. Rice noodles, ground chicken (or maybe it’s pork….), a sweet and salty garlicky brown sauce and lots of cabbage — that’s what I was thinking about when I was tossing things into the Le Cruset with my cabbage tonight.

As usual with my recipes, all measurements are approximate and you need to use your own taste buds and cooking preferences to make this recipe your own. I’m so sure the next time I make it I won’t look at the recipe and it will come out with a different personality just as delicious as this batch.

Garlicky Asian Cabbage

Ingredients:

• half a medium head of cabbage, thinly slice (I used my food processor)
• 1 large clove garlic, minced
• 3 large scallions, sliced on the diagonal
• 1/2 teaspoon fish sauce
• 2 teaspoons tamari or soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon rice vinegar (but I really just sprinkled)
• 1 tablespoon hoisin sauce (again with the sprinkle … or was it a drizzle?)

Heat a skillet over medium heat, add a bit of oil and toss in the cabbage and garlic. Stir until the cabbage begins to wilt, then add the scallions. Add the fish sauce, tamari and vinegar and cook for a few minutes. You want the cabbage to be cooked but still crunchy, so if it’s mushy you’ve cooked it too long (You’re allowed one do-over since you still have half a head of cabbage left!).

Add the hoisin sauce and mix thoroughly. Remove from heat and serve.

I loved this cabbage served with the fried rice, but it would pair nicely with chicken satay, any Asian-inspired rib dish, stir-fried tempeh or your favorite.

A few months ago, I started a new full-time job. This meant that at 18 months of age, my son Cooper would be going to daycare for the first time. This is not a decision I made lightly. I only started him out at three days a week, with my sister watching him the other two, so he would still be around family. I toured several facilities, rejecting one very expensive one purely based on the fact that the person who was giving me the tour coughed into her hands (everybody knows you go for the elbow, come on!). I finally found a school that put equal amounts of emphasis on cleanliness and education, and my search was over.

This is the type of place where you pack your kid’s lunch, that way you’re responsible for his or her nutrition and dietary restrictions. They provide snacks, but they keep them pretty healthy. The school manual even warns against packing foods with too many preservatives in your child’s lunch. I was really behind this whole ethos, because one of the big things we’re trying to do with Cooper is not have him make this same food mistakes his father and I have made.

Good habits start young, so while we’re struggling to undue years of questionable food choices, we figure that at least we can start our son off eating really well. We feed him organic food whenever possible, and try to stay away from too many heavily processed items. He goes through phases, as all toddlers do, but the other day he totally munched on some grilled asparagus, so I was thrilled.

I was less thrilled, however, when Luke went to pick Cooper up from daycare and the teacher chirped, “Cooper ate three cupcakes today!” Luke’s head nearly fell off his body, especially when she continued, “Most kids only eat the icing, but he ate the whole thing. He’s a really good eater!” Clearly this woman is insane.

Look, I have a sweet tooth, so I know how delicious cupcakes are. While we try to keep him away from sugar as much as possible, he’s had enough for us to know that that kid loves him some desserts — especially chocolate. So when his teacher said that he ate three cupcakes, that didn’t seem like some sort of amazing feat. It seemed like a thing a kid would do when confronted with three frickin’ cupcakes. Of course he’s going to eat them, they are delicious cupcakes! My kid isn’t an idiot, you guys; he knows the score.

What blew my mind about the whole thing is how anyone in their right mind would give an 18-month-old child three cupcakes in the first place. Granted, I found out later that they were mini-cupcakes, but still. That’s a lot of sugar for a kid who only weighs 25 pounds. That particular day was a potluck celebration, so one mini cupcake? Sure, I can see that. I’m not a monster, after all. But I couldn’t believe that the adults I put in charge of my son would think this was a good idea.

So what do you think? How many cupcakes is too many?

I might have mentioned once or 87 times that Kona’s got me addicted to making homemade pasta. I started with what came out to be a cross between fettuccine and linguine for my pasta with green beans, artichokes and capers. It was delicious, fun, satisfying and all that other good stuff, but my real motivation for making homemade pasta was because I desperately miss raviolis.

Sure, I’d snitch a bite if Keith ordered them from a restaurant, but it’s not the same as enjoying a whole meal of them and it’s very difficult to find wheat-free raviolis. These were my first attempt, based on a Hawaiian recipe which was a little too crazy for my first foray into ravioli-land. I simplified the flavors and made it more traditionally Italian, since that’s what I had been craving for years anyway.

I liked the recipe because I had everything in the house and there was no cheese filling, which my son definitely didn’t need. They got the seal-of-approval from the five-year-old, so the cheese was not missed (though I will be making some cheese-filled ones at some point).

Homemade Sun-Dried Tomato Raviolis

Ingredients:

• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 cup white beans, cooked and drained (I used canned)
• 5 sun-dried tomatoes, re-hydrated
• 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon water from the sun-dried tomatoes reconstituting
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/4 teaspoon Salt
• ½ teaspoon fresh chopped rosemary
• 1 tablespoon fresh chopped basil

Cook the onion and garlic in a bit of olive oil and then add them to a food processor, along with all the other ingredients. Blend, and add more sun-dried tomato water to get your desired consistency.

Make your pasta dough like Kona did, or try making spelt flour pasta, my favorite! Roll the dough out to your desired consistency, cut into ravioli-sized squares and plop some filling in the center of each square. I just wet the edges with a little water, put another pasta square on top and pinched the raviolis shut.

Toss raviolis into boiling water and cook until they float, which is not very long at all, just a few minutes. Serve with your favorite sauce, or try the one below.

Tomato & Feta Cheese Sauce for White Bean Ravioli

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces diced tomatoes
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup packed fresh basil, chopped
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 2 tablespoons feta cheese
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 2 tablespoons white wine

Cook onion in the olive oil until tender, then add wine, balsamic vinegar and tomatoes to pan. Cook to reduce slightly then stir in all other ingredients. Serve over raviolis.

The ecstasy of being able to eat raviolis again has been unmatched by any other food experience lately. Oh stuffed pasta, I missed you so … I’m very glad you’re back in my life.

The fun part about writing a food blog is that I can go on and on about a recipe I loved, long after my family is sick of hearing about it. You’d be surprised at how long I can not only rave about the amazingly perfect chewiness of these addictive oat waffles … almost as long as I can make Keith feel guilty for eating the last leftover one and saving me exactly none!

My inspiration for this recipe came from Mothering‘s outta here oat waffles. In fact, Mothering is almost back in my good graces after the clearly untested chocolate pretzels recipe that they published, which was a complete fail.

Besides the outrageously perfect texture — crispy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside — these waffles are prepared in such a way that they are nutritionally maximized. Because the grains are soaked in an acidic medium — in this case, yogurt — the anti-nutrients that are present in most grains are become chemically inactive, allowing the rich nutrients to get where they need to go — into you.

Cinnamon Oatmeal Waffles

Ingredients:

• 2 cups rolled or whole or steel cut oats
• 2 1/2 cups unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• 1/4 cup organic plain whole milk yogurt
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 tablespoons palm sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 4 tablespoons melted butter

Combine oats, milk and yogurt in blender. Cover and let soak, refrigerated, for 8 hours. Add remaining ingredients and blend until smooth. Preheat an oiled or nonstick waffle iron. Pour batter onto griddle and cook for about 5 minutes, or until golden. Serve hot however you like — a little drizzle of grade B maple syrup was all I needed.

Makes 8 waffles.

It seems like a lot of prep time, but if you just do the first step before bed, blending in the other ingredients in the morning is a snap, and if you have a waffle maker, you don’t even have to watch it — just take it out when they light turns green.

Out of all the waffles I’ve ever made, this texture is my hands-down favorite … I can’t wait to make them again.

Just picture this: Seven children up to their elbows in pretzel dough, creating strange and deviant-shaped pretzels and loving every minute of it. That was my Saturday night when it was our turn to host the monthly parents’ night out for our moms’ group.

Contrary to my fraught-with-procrastination personality, I actually prepared for this ahead of time. It was a good thing too, because the plan was to make chocolate pretzels. Mothering, you’ve let me way, way down because this recipe was useless. The dough never became dough and we ended up tossing it and finding another easy homemade pretzel recipe that was perfect. Perhaps it was the lack of yeast that made the chocolate pretzels one giant fail but there was no way that dough would roll into snakes to shape into pretzels.

Regular pretzels worked amazingly well and it was fun to see the difference between regular flour and the spelt dough we used for Owen. They both came out perfect but very different. One thing they had in common was their addictiveness: we were making another batch less than 24 hours later.

Spelt Pretzels

Ingredients:

• 1 1/8 teaspoons yeast
• 3/4 cup warm water
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 tablespoon of sugar
• 2 cups + 2 tablespoons of sprouted spelt flour (or regular)
• 1 egg, beaten
• sea salt or kosher salt

Preheat oven to 350º.

Measure warm water into a large bowl. Sprinkle on yeast and stir until soft. Add salt, sugar, and flour. Mix and knead dough with hands. Roll and twist into any desired shapes. Place on greased cookie sheet. Brush with beaten egg. Sprinkle with salt. Bake 12-15 minutes.

Tricks and tips:

• When you paint on the egg, be generous. Although these won’t get super-browned (the regular flour version didn’t either), the egg does help.
• Also don’t be shy with the salt. We were with the first batch and they really needed more. The second batch was perfect.

It was seriously fun to make these pretzels and the instant gratification with the yeast product was something that spoke to my heart.

Owen calls them “those big cookies.” I just call them delicious. They are dense and buttery and I can only eat one, but it’s plenty.

The inspiration for these scones came from three different places. I know I’ve mentioned Uprisings before, and there’s a recipe in there for orange date scones that caught my eye. My friend Michelle often makes her Grandma’s chocolate chip date cake for playdates, and it’s something we all beg for … so good. Finally — does anyone else out there remember the chocolate chip orange scones that Trader Joe’s used to sell but then had the nerve to discontinue? Back when I could still eat wheat, we’d buy them often and eat them with wild abandon.

All of those and more went into this recipe.

Orange Date Chocolate Chip Scones

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup butter
• 4 cups spelt flour
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 tablespoons agave syrup
• 1/2 cup orange juice concentrate + 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup dates, chopped
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Put the butter, flour, baking powder and baking soda in your food processor and blend until you’ve achieved coarse crumbs. Or if you must, cut the butter into the flour by hand and eat these for breakfast next year or so.

By hand (meaning with your hands), mix in the eggs, agave and orange juice mixture until just moistened. Fold in the dates and chocolate chips.

Plop that dough right on your countertop and flatten to about 1 inch high. Use a large round biscuit cutter to make your scone shapes or just form them into biscuits shapes by hand. There’s no right or wrong here — they’ll taste great no matter what.

Place scones on a greased cookies sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes.

Each week, fabulous recipes grace Debbie’s in-box and pop up on her computer screen, and she’s sharing her favorites with you.

There’s always something tempting my palate electronically. I can’t open up my laptop without being alerted to another luscious recipe. And lately, I’m thinking in menus. How good would this kabocha lentil soup be with these cheddar bacon biscuits? And I might just eat two desserts — baked pears with lemongrass, ginger and vanilla and chocolate pretzels.

Are you sick of my Heidi Swanson love-fest yet? You won’t be after I share this recipe for kabocha French lentil soup … winter squash, green lentils, ginger, fennel … you must be drooling over that unique combination. Like Heidi, I’ve done the lentil soup thing to death yet still I want to make this one, yesterday.

I think I’d like to eat this soup with some cheddar bacon biscuits with fresh chives. It’s no secret that I adore savory muffins, like spinach muffins with feta, and I’d even thought about how good those muffins would be with fresh chives. And Epicurious recommends using their biscuits to make ham sandwiches which sounds divine to me.

I’ve been trying to get my little chef to make these chocolate pretzels with me for a couple of weeks now, and nothing. It’s very strange because he loves pretzels, loves chocolate and loves baking. It wouldn’t be as much fun making them by myself but it just may come to that.

Baked pears with lemongrass, ginger and vanilla sounds just about perfect, doesn’t it? And you don’t yet even know about the coconut milk, lime juice and pistachios that make up the sauce and garnish for this unique dessert. There’s something about that La Tartine Gourmande….