Category: soups & starters
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Kale Salad with Apples, Red Onion, & Sunflower Seeds & Stopping Time
First thing’s first – this salad is for kale lovers and haters alike. It takes five minutes to prepare and can be meal on its own, made into a messy sandwich, added to an omelet, or served on the side of whatever else you’re having. Plus, it’s pretty and healthy and if you need to… Read more
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Carrot-Broccoli Cheddar Soup & Little House on the Prairie
I’m in bed, flanked on either side by my daughter, 9, and youngest son, 6. “Here she comes, falling down the hill!” Will says, putting his finger on my computer screen where fictional Laura Ingalls runs with her sisters. We’ve been making our way through the entire Little House on the Prairie series (having read… Read more
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Chard with Brown Sugar Pumpkin Seeds and Dried Cherries & Fun Foreign Words
Germans have a word for the feeling of being along in the woods. Waldeinsamkeit. Italians have a word for the ring left on a table by a cold glass. Culaccino. I might have to make a word for being alone with a plate of well-seasoned chard that’s dotted with crispy, sweet seeds and a tang… Read more
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Red Onion, Tomato, Double Cheese Galette with Corn & Garbanzo Crust
This started as many recipes do, with good intentions…until I reached for the wrong flour. Is there an incorrect one? I guess. If you’re making traditional chocolate chip cookies, for example, and you use chickpea flour, maybe the results aren’t what you wanted. But for this gallette, the garbanzo bean flour wound up in my… Read more
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10-Minute Escarole, White Bean, and Parmesan Soup & (Not) The Smartest Phone
I don’t talk on the phone while driving (nor do I text, but that should be a given, right?). However, I find the hands-free option that comes with my cheap phone very useful while my fingers are caked with cream and espresso from the tiramisu I made this weekend (recipe to come!). My phone is… Read more
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Green Bean Salad with Capers and Red Onion & What I Want for My 40th Birthday
My almost-11-year-old is compiling a wish list for his birthday. He wants a drum set (this would help but not eliminate his drumming on any and every available surface with hands, chopsticks, shoes, etc). He’d like more Big Nate books. Desires a computer only on which to write stories (no internet, no games). He’d like… Read more
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Sorrel Labne (Lemony Yogurt Dip) & Breaking Up
From the 5-year-old a few night ago: Him: [In bed, blushing] I have an idea! Me: [in doorway] Oh, yeah? Him: Come here. I go and sit next to him and he wraps his arms around me, using his super-human strength (really, he is oddly strong) to pull my ear to his lips. Him: [whispering]… Read more
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Tomato-Onion Soup with Fresh Parmesan & Happy Days
Dear Scott Baio, Thanks for appearing in my dream last night! The party was really fun, even though the staircase had weird turquoise and brown carpet and there were chickens inside your house and there was no soup in my mug. I’m sorry to say that you are 30 years too late in your proposal.… Read more
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Italian White Bean Spread & Birds
The big news around our house is that Will turned 5 last week and, perhaps to celebrate, two chickadees have finally moved into the bird house will built and painted a couple of years ago. He painted it again last spring feeling as many house-sellers do that a fresh coat might clinch the sale. But… Read more
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Creamy Carrot Soup & Play These Games (Mother’s Day Gift)
If I were to make a list of life’s necessities for my kids, my friend, Heather, would be in the top five. Well, not Heather, exactly – I mean, she takes great care of herself but she won’t be around forever – but someone like her. Someone in their lives they can call just to… Read more
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Passover Leek, Kale, and Bok Choy Gratin & Freedom ’12
As we prepare for family and discussions of religious, political, and intellectual freedom, my family celebrates the year marker of a different kind of freedom. Freedom from the Year That Was, moving past a dark time and into the spring. My son returns to school, the crocuses bloom in the yard, the weather goes from… Read more
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Vegetarian Boston Baked Beans & Bad Songs to Sing at Bedtime
If there’s a skill of mine that will never be rewarded financially, and in fact only serves as a road trip plus or game night choose me incentive, it is my ability for lyric recall. All that brain space that is supposed to be taken up by useful facts and figures is chock full of… Read more
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Red Chard with Citrus-Pomegranate Glaze & Marital Advice for My Kids
Kids, the day will come when you will ask me about marriage. You will want to know how I was sure about your father, and about certainty in love. And here is what I will say: it is easy to imagine and to live the carousel of love, to find the person you want to… Read more
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Kale Salad with Parmesan and Golden Raisins & Making Progress
You know how hearing a song can transport you to another time, a specific day, a season, or a person? It’s the same with food. A couple of years ago, my best friend and I had a book event in New York City. We read and signed and mingled and then escaped to a shoebox-sized… Read more
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Brown Sugar Swirl Bread &Questions
A collection of recent questions from the kids: When you are alone during the day and I’m at preschool, are you lonely? Is it true that one day the earth will run out of water? Do you love Daddy more now or more when you first met him? Why do I have to wear underwear?… Read more