BasilandFig

Several years ago, Andy’s workday looked like this: Teach from 8 to 3:30. Bring a turkey sandwich (2 slices turkey, mustard, whole-wheat bread) and an apple for lunch. Get home by 4. Walk the dog. Prep for next class. Eat something, but not too much that it will make you [...]

Last fall I did something that could either be called brilliant or insane (I’m leaning towards brilliant): I bought a 45+ pound box of sweet potatoes.  For $12.  At a hardware store.

It was for a good cause, okay? (I think it was a church, or something?)

And they were dug from a farm just a few [...]

I wish I could say that I was a master of tofu recipes, a guru of soybean curd cookery.

And I wish I could also say that I loved tofu every time I ate it, in every permutation.

And while there are so many different things you can do with it—burgers! stir-fries! vegan cheesecakes!—most all of these [...]

I only recently stumbled across the idea of putting oatmeal into smoothies and I have to say, it totally blew my mind.  Adding a whole grain?  To a drink?  It’s more delicious than it sounds.

The first time I made this, I found out (the hard way) that my blender wasn’t quite up to the task [...]

Have you been making refrigerator pickles all summer?

We have.

I wish I could say that they’re from my own cucumbers that I grew but, save for one, they’re not.  For some reason I have bad luck with cucumbers, and by ‘bad luck’ I mean that there is some virus or pest that always kills them, but [...]

It’s getting to be that time of year when hot breakfasts become—to me at least—sickening.  The blast of heat and humidity that sucker-punches you in the gut when you walk out the door—even though it’s not even 8 a.m. yet.

Hello, summer.

It’s mornings like these—when the humidity makes it feel like 85° and I can’t even [...]

I was going to call this simply the ‘Three C’s Bowl,’ or maybe actually ‘The Five C’s Bowl:’ Cauliflower chickpea couscous bowl with cumin-curry dressing.

But that’s a little much, don’t you think?

That’s what I thought.

This isn’t so much a recipe as it is an assemblage of ingredients—adjust it to suit your tastes or what you [...]

Let’s be honest: the real reason I first made this recipe was because of the name.  I mean, who wouldn’t enjoy going around saying, “I’m eating gado-gado for lunch,” at which point your coworkers will raise their eyebrows and back slooowly out of the break room.

Originally, the sauce is meant to be served atop a [...]

I used to think I was invincible.

Well, maybe not entirely invincible, but that maybe my immune system was.

For example: eating food off of a stranger’s plate at a restaurant? Done that.  A piece of unwrapped candy that fell on the ground of a mall parking lot?  I ate that, too.  6-month old expired yogurt?  Why [...]

Every so often, my mom will go through her recipe files to try to pare them down so they are not all crammed quite so tightly in the recipe boxes.

Some of them she tosses or gives away.  This is how I ended up with recipes for ‘Sweet and Sour Tofu Balls’ (which I have yet [...]