Here is a simple recipe for a healthy summer breakfast. A quick and balanced breakfast for one.
My excellently smart and organized VA Kate Tilton likes simple recipes. She’d prefer three ingredients, but Kate, this one’s for you and I hope you like it. Four ingredients, ten minutes (with plenty of cut-up cantaloupe to spare), a lovely balance of protein, healthful fat and fruit fiber, and the acid from the lime enhances the absorption of the antioxidants (like vitamin C) to boot.
When choosing a ripe cantaloupe (aka musk) melon at the grocery, find one that smells fresh and oh so slightly gives to the firm touch – you can smell and touch at the stem-end. If the stem area is mushy it may be over-ripe. The outside should be a rosy dusky tan, and a bit of green may mean best if you let it ripen on the counter a couple days before using (which is how I use musk and honeydew melons – let them rest for a bit). If the skin has indentations in it, you are fine until you see dark moldy spots which eventually reach into the meat, then you’ve let it hang around too long or chosen an older specimen than you intended. Fresh cantaloupe will keep in the fridge for 3 or 4 days once you slice it. Cantaloupe is a great source of vitamins A and C. More on recent studies and details of cantaloupe nutrition.
Cantaloupe Walnut and Cilantro with Lime Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup ripe cantaloupe, sliced and cut into pieces
- 1/2 cup raw walnuts
- 1/4 cup fresh cilantro
- Juice of 1/2 lime
Directions
Place the cut cantaloupe in a serving bowl, add the nuts and cilantro and give a toss with your clean hands or a spoon. Squeeze fresh lime juice over, toss and eat.
The flower topping this breakfast is actually a cilantro flower from my garden. Just the gifts of the garden available at the moment!
Enjoy the day, enjoy the season.
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Summertime!
While we may be having a little taste of what I call winter-summer (it has been freaking freezing this week…I remember we had a summer-winter in the Shire last year), I trust that warm weather is on the way. This is one of my favorite recipes – light, tasty, spicy and perfect for the season. I serve it as a side or main dish, with my current passion – sprouted corn tortillas warmed with a bit of cheese between, quesadilla style.
Summer Black Bean Salsa Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 can (16 oz) black beans (I used Eden brand)
- 1 cup frozen corn
- Juice of 2 limes
- Two or three slices of red onion, chopped, makes about 1/4 cup
- 1/4 red pepper, chopped
- 1/2 cup fresh cilantro
- 1/2 tsp tobasco sauce
- 1/3 cup cold-pressed EVOO
- Plenty of salt and pepper (to taste)
Directions
Could not be easier. Toss and enjoy (this is a recipe that while delicious, can be better the second day due to marinating).
Enjoy!
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Food fresh from the garden doesn’t need much help to taste great and nourish you deeply. Our fresh peas often don’t make it into the kitchen because we snack away right in the garden. Here’s a simple recipe for snow peas with mint.
Minted Snow Pea Recipe
Ingredients
- Snow peas or fresh spring peas – about 2 cups, cleaned
- Fresh mint, cleaned and chopped
- High-quality olive oil (like CA organic cold-pressed)
- Squeeze of fresh lemon
- Salt and pepper to taste.
Directions
- Grow peas! Or, locate fresh snow or sweet peas at a farmer’s market or grocery. They are an easy grow, and I love that they are best planted just as soon as the earth is thawed enough to work. So, either pick your own or you can get them at a farmer’s market or grocery (…growing your own is cheaper though more time-intensive, but the benefits are manyfold).
- Place a medium skillet over medium-high heat, add olive oil and peas, sauté 2-3 minutes.
- Add chopped mint & a squeeze of fresh lemon. Saute another minute.
- Dress with salt and pepper and enjoy.
Tip: the key is not to overcook the peas…literally sauté for just a minute or two to keep that lovely sweetness and crispness. Enjoy!
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Here’s a nice thick nutrient-packed vegan red lentil stew or soup for a warm winter infusion of tasty goodness. Coconut and tahini make this rich & satisfying.
Vegan Red Lentil Stew Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 large yellow onion, chopped
- 5-6 medium carrots, cleaned and chopped
- Small bunch organic celery, chopped
- 1 c dry red lentils
- 2.5 c water
- 1/4 c turmeric
- 2 Tbsp olive oil
- 2 Tbsp coconut manna
- 3-4 thumbs-sized piece of fresh ginger, cleaned and chopped
- 1 large clove garlic, chopped
- 3 Tbsp tahini
- 1/2 c fresh parsley, chopped
Directions
Toss onions, carrot and celery into a large stock pot, add olive oil and sauté until vegetables are soft and there’s a smidgen of browning. Add remaining ingredients except parsley, and simmer on low for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in parsley and enjoy.
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When I was young I worked on Bentley’s Farm in my bucolic hometown of Lyndonville, NY. Like many kids in my town, I walked down to Bentley’s to pick apples and raspberries, hoe tomatoes and plant Brussel sprouts. I sat on a contraption with seven other women (a combination of middle school girls and migrant farmers) which was dragged behind a tractor, with a tray of seedlings in front of me. A metal arm circled up between two of us, and every other one, we set the seedlings to be planted. What I remember most clearly is the exhaust and the dirt – dirt deep in my ears, in my teeth, way up my nose – you get the picture. Too, it’s one of those heavy-equipment jobs that we didn’t really think about but modern moms would probably not allow their kids to do…too dangerous. Things did get caught in those metal arms, and it was unnerving.
While I always liked cabbage, these sort of experiences in early life tend to put one off certain foods, and Brussel sprouts were one of those for me. Not until just the last couple years have I allowed myself this particular appreciation. Perhaps the smells and the relentlessness of planting who knows how many thousands of Brussel sprout plants has faded. Happy to say I now I love ’em. One of my favorite ways of serving these little lovelies is with a seasoning of local honey and a good seeded Dijon-style mustard.
Honey Mustard Brussels Sprouts
Ingredients
- 1/2 pound Brussel sprouts, about a dozen
- 2 Tbsp grape seed oil or ghee
- 3 Tbsp Dijon-style mustard
- 1 Tbsp local honey
Directions
- First, clean the sprouts by pulling off any yellowed leaves, and trimming the base. Rinse if needed then slice into quarters.
- Heat a large heavy skillet on medium-high, and add the oil or ghee.
- Pop the Brussel sprouts into the oil and sauté for 10-15 minutes until they reach the desired texture and done-ness (I like them al dente – with some life left in them!).
- Spoon honey and mustard into the dish and toss. Heat until the well coated and yummy.
- Serve warm, and saves well for a day or two.
Here’s the incomparable George Mateljan Foundation on Brussels Sprout Nutrition.
What’s your favorite way to eat Brussels sprouts?
May you stay warm and dry and eat well this week.
New year blessings – Annie
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Detox seems to naturally set in this week. It feels great right now to eat greens, beans, nuts and seeds!
If you are shaking off the sugar bacchanal that set in around Halloween and crested in the Hana-Kwana-Christmas-to-New Year celebration (wasn’t that fun?!), here is one more warming, grounding soup to help you remember how it feels to be simply nourished by food again.
This soup features winter root vegetables: sweet yellow turnips and carrots, along with onions and white beans. It’s a terrific sweet-rooty canvas that you can finish with a variety of herb-spice flavor combinations. I chose black pepper, celery seed, saffron and turmeric for this one.
For this recipe I used a combination of slow techniques (soaking and cooking dry beans) and short-cuts (a commercial “better-than” chicken stock). I find joy in cooking from scratch on a Sunday as I think, write, hang out and virtually-visit friends and family by phone and yep, Facebook. While making stock is yet another wonderful use of time, I am also a firm believer in the “better-than” concept of doing the best you can and not worrying too much about achieving from-scratch perfection. So, the stock I used has a little cane sugar in it, an ingredient that never would have occurred to me to add to my own stock, but the soup is still a celebration of plant-rich goodness. I also used an immersion blender, an inexpensive new tool in my kitchen that makes blended vegetable soups a breeze. You can use a regular blender to get a smooth consistency, but this soup would still be tasty if mashed by hand or not blended at all.
My immersion blender was a great $30 investment.
Ingredients
10 oz dry white beans (I used organic navy beans)
2″x4″ piece dry konzu (seaweed)
water
1 qt vegetable or chicken stock (I used Pacific brand free-range chicken broth)
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium yellow turnip, peeled and cubed
5 medium carrots, washed and sliced
1 tsp celery seed
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp turmeric
a few dry saffron threads
Directions
The night before soup day, rinse beans, and place in a medium-sized pot with konzu, then cover with water. Leave beans to soak overnight. Strain off the soaking water.
In a large soup pot over medium heat, begin with olive oil and onions. Saute until the onions are soft. Add beans, carrots, turnip, and stock along with several cups of water to cover, and simmer over low heat until the root vegetables and the beans are soft, about 45 minutes.
For a blended soup, get that immersion blender buzzing. Alternatively, use a blender for a portion or the soup or leave it unblended. Add spices, reserving a few saffron threads, and simmer for another 20 minutes (or, if you’ve learned how to “bloom” your spices from someone like Jeremy at Kripalu, go to it!), top each bowl with saffron threads and serve warm.
