green onion – The Kitchen Illiterate

Super Herb-y Wild Rice Salad

We renewed our CSA recently, after an unintentionally long break. Our CSA is from Full Belly Farm out in Guinda, California. I love getting a CSA box: It keeps me from buying and eating the same vegetables every week, and it forces me to be more creative in the kitchen. Not to mention I like taking at least some of my grocery shopping out of the industrial food chain and giving money to people who are committed to building and nurturing their land and all that other Wendell Berry-esque stuff.
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Field Fresh Chopped Salad with Chicken

I’ve always loved the idea of eating a great big luscious crunchy salad for dinner. But I’ve never been very good at coming up with creative ideas for main dish salads. I tend to get stuck at lettuce and carrots. And my basic vinaigrette is great, but it can get a bit monotonous. But there is a prepared salad from Trader Joe’s that I love: the Field Fresh Chopped Salad. It’s sweet and savory and fresh and crunchy, and I got in the habit of buying it for solitary dinners and occasional lunches. Then I looked at the ingredients. The poor chicken in this salad is full of so many preservatives, and I know the vegetables could be fresher and more full of flavor. So I decided to make this salad myself.
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Wild Greek Rice and Spring Onion Crostini

I’ve been loving all of the foodie shopping opportunities here in the Bay Area. I’m a bit of a grocery store junkie: whether it’s a big supermarket or a small gourmet boutique, I love browsing the shelves, looking for the unusual, the new, and the hard-to-find, seeking out good deals and inspiration. Oakland is full of great grocery stores: We’re only blocks from Whole Foods, and Trader Joe’s is right up the road. Berkeley Bowl is a heaven of wonderful smelling produce, and the Rockridge Market Hall brings together all of my favorite things (bread, fresh pasta, sustainably-produced meat, wine, coffee, the list goes on) under one roof. And let’s not even get started on the Farmers’ Markets.
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Soba Noodles with Bok Choy and Tahini

When I got my first bundle of bok choy from my CSA, I started searching around for new ways to prepare this Asian green. I must admit, I’ve been getting a wee bit tired of garlic-sauteed greens and rice, so I wanted something unique. Unfortunately, the Great Google turned up many, many of the same recipe: bok choy sauteed or steamed, and seasoned with toasted sesame oil and soy sauce, with some ginger thrown in for extra flavor. Of course, that sounds delicious, and I made it once or twice, but when I wanted to branch out, it took me awhile to find something different.

I’m glad I searched so diligently, because this Tahini sauce has become one of my new favorites. It’s reminiscent of a peanut sauce, but a little more bitter. It’s easy as heck, but could probably be fancied up, too. And it is filling and delicious.
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From the farm: Pea Shoot Pesto

I got my first box from West End Farm this week, which was very exciting. It was full of green things, many of them unknown to me, but thanks to the handy dandy newsletter, they were quickly identified. Tis the season, apparently, for pea shoots and baby greens and spinach and lettuce and teeny, tiny radishes, not to mention wonderful smelling mint and green onions. And all of it looked so unbelievably fresh and lovely. And green. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do with all of those greens, but the newsletter recommended making pesto with the tiny, delicate pea shoots, and I figured it was high time I get over my fear of making pesto and give it a shot.
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Laura’s Mike’s Mess

My first year of college I wasn’t quite ready to leave the comforting embrace of my small hippie college town. Unfortunately, I found it a little bit tricky to find a job in that town. I graduated during the last serious plunge in the employment rate, in 2001, and it was not a good time to be a newly graduated Lit major, I can tell you that. I ended up working in various coffee shops and restaurants before I finally landed that first desk job, and while I was certainly extremely poor and had to defer payment of my student loans for too, too long, I wouldn’t exchange the experience for anything. I met great people, I had a lot of fun, learned to carry multiple cups of coffee at once, and I discovered what remains to this day my favorite breakfast: The Mike’s Mess from Zachary’s, in Santa Cruz, California. This year, I decided I need to try to make it myself.
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Happy New Year Hoppin’ John

When I first moved to Boston I lived with a girl from Texas. She was the first Texan I knew and from her I learned that Texans are a bit unlike the rest of us. There are things about living in Texas that you just don’t get anywhere else, and Texas food is a big part of growing up Texan. There were special brands of beans in the cupboards of the house I shared with her, and jars of bacon drippings in the refrigerator, and spice blends I’d never heard of. And on New Years day, she made a big pot of black eyed peas and rice and collard greens. She called it Hoppin’ John and told me that it is very important to eat Hoppin’ John on New Years day, for luck.

I never got a recipe from her, and when I decided to make Hoppin’ John this New Years day, thinking that perhaps I need all the luck I can get, I found a pretty wide disparity in recipes online. So I decided to go ahead and make my own. It is, after all, really the black eyed peas that matter here. Eating black eyed peas for luck is a tradition that might date back as far as 500 CE. Much like lentils in Italy, the peas are meant to be symbolic of coins, and eating them should bring prosperity in the coming year. So I’m eating black eyed peas and hoping for a little more prosperity for all of us.
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A new kind of Rice and Beans

This post is especially for my brother, Patrick, who is newly independent, and who loves cooking as much as I do.

I have been making and eating rice and beans for a long, long time. It’s probably the first thing I learned to cook. It is comfort food, it is day-before-the-paycheck food, with a little meat thrown it is day-after-the-paycheck food. It can be healthy or over the top and indulgent. I suspect it is the endless versatility of rice and beans that makes me love it so, and come back to it at least once a month.

For a long time I made rice and beans using packaged mixes, like Goya or Mahatma. And I’ll be honest, sometimes I still do. But making rice and beans from scratch is one of the least expensive, easiest dinners around, so the box mixes aren’t really worth it, unless you need the sodium fix. And it is great for college students. You can make a big pot for about $5 and it will last you all week. The rice and beans together make a complete protein, so you don’t need to splurge for meat. And you can add all kinds of vegetables to be sure you’re getting your greens.
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