mains

Versatile Mung Dal Stew with Healing Spices

January 5, 2017 By Anya 8 Comments

This post was created in partnership with Amira.

This month we are focusing on recipes that will hopefully be helpful to those wanting to hit the reset button after all the holiday eating and drinking. I wanted a very manageable weekday dinner to be the first in the series, because we haven’t had one up in a while, and because I myself have been on the hunt for some new but trustworthy, quick and wholesome meal ideas. Most of my focus right now is on completing the kitchen renovation, a good part of which my husband and I have been doing ourselves. It’s been dragging on much longer than we expected – a common theme when it comes renovations, as I hear. We are finally down to the small finishing touches, but they somehow seem to be the hardest to complete. Cooking up large batches of un-elaborate, nourishing dishes like this stew to have on hand during the week has been one of my strategies for staying sane throughout this whole process. It’s amazing how helpful a home-cooked meal can be during times of stress.

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Whole Braised Holiday Cauliflower

November 2, 2016 By Anya 11 Comments

This post was created in partnership with San-J.

Happy November! It’s so hard to believe that the year is almost over.
November in the U.S. means Thanksgiving, and for the rest of the world, those December and January holidays are not so far off as well. We are here to give you some ideas to consider for those festive family dinners, friendsgivings and potlucks, with an emphasis on vegetables, fruit and whole food ingredients.
The holidays can be a little tough if you are trying to stay on track with eating well or even simply keeping away from meat/dairy/gluten. If you aren’t participating in one or more of those categories, chances are, you might feel excluded at a holiday table. And even if you are totally fine with eating those veg-centered sides only, others might find it offensive or feel as though they are not being good hosts, etc. The point is, there is usually a main event to a holiday table, and although to me it’s always been the pie, to most it’s the bird, or another grand platter of some sort of meat. There is a ceremony to getting that platter on the table – it takes time and care to pick out and prepare, which creates anticipation and excitement. Here, I applied that kind of thinking to cauliflower, a whole cauliflower, prepared in a way that feels ritualistic, celebratory and fun, and delicious enough to be a holiday table centerpiece.

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October 27, 2016 By Anya 5 Comments

This post is created in partnership with Truffle Toast Home.

Hey! It’s good to be back after a week off. We are going to try something different with the way we post recipes here from week to week. Instead of presenting you with a random assortment of whatever dishes strike our fancy, we are going to have more focused themes to center our recipes around. We are doing this to be more purposeful, exploratory and thorough with our recipe development, and to learn alongside our readers as we cook and elaborate on our themes. Ultimately, we want our recipes to be more useful to you, to help you avoid the dead end of making a recipe once and then never again, and to start more of a conversation and community around your suggestions for these themes. The themes can be based on all kinds of circumstances, from the time of year to a particular ingredient, type of dish, or a feeling we are shooting for. So, without further ado, starting with today’s post and until the end of this year, we will be focusing on holiday recipes – indulgent but healthy, full of whole foods and plant power, festive and fun. There will be things to serve at your holiday table, bring to a potluck, or even gift as a present. We are so excited to get this going!

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September 29, 2016 By Anya 10 Comments

This post was created in partnership with Infinity Jars.

Having recently finished a cookbook manuscript with the backbone of seasonality, I turn to seasons more than ever when coming up with recipes. It’s hard not to sound like a broken record when talking about the topic, but I find just as much romance as I do practicality in eating what grows at any given time of the year. I grew up in a place, where the season completely dictated what we ate, which at times led to scarcity and deprivation, but made the periods of abundance that much sweeter. Nowadays, I fall back on that feeling, having made peace with waiting a year for the sweetest summer tomato or the plumpest fig. Of course, I will also buy boxed tomatoes for stews and roast up well-traveled California cherry tomatoes when a craving hits out of season – frankly I’m grateful for such options, having experienced what it’s like to have no options during my Soviet childhood. But I also know that the wait for the real deal will be well worth it in the end, so why not embrace it?

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