Listen to the Flavors

One of my resolutions is to eat a green salad EVERY DAY. Every day! I can tell I've been sticking to it so far, because I can never seem to keep enough lettuce in the house. I am buying 3-4 heads of lettuce a week instead of 1-2. A nice side effect of this, rather unexpected, is that my 12-year-old son is also eating tons of green salad now too. As long as I keep the Caesar dressing flowing, he is totally into the salad. I've usually been doing red or green leaf lettuce, tons of chopped fresh parsley, carrots, celery, cucumber, maybe some green beans...and sometimes protein like beans, chopped deli turkey, or tuna. Sometimes a few walnuts. My favorite "dressing" is just a drizzle of fresh lemon juice and a little olive oil, but if I don't have that, I have to get a little creative. Like today I don't have any lemons so I squeezed some grapefruit juice and a little olive oil. I don't really like using vinegar because it's too harsh and overpowers t...

As a way of procrastinating just a bit from what I really need to be doing, I'm writing about the homemade mac 'n cheese I made tonight. I found that coconut flour makes a damn fine replacement for regular flour in homemade mac 'n cheese. Coconut flour is low carb, gluten free, high fiber, and high protein. Is there no end to the virtues of the coconut? You can use brown rice pasta to make the whole dish gluten free, if you wish. This lightens it up quite a bit and it is still tasty. Melt 1 to 3 tbsp. of butter (depending on how thick and creamy you want the sauce to be) in a pan. Once it's melted, add an equal amount of coconut flour. (I used Bob's Red Mill coconut flour which I'm sure I found at Whole Foods.) Stir continuously on low to medium heat until the coconut flour is gently browned, a few minutes. Then add 1 cup of milk, bring to a boil, then quickly turn down to low heat and continue stirring frequently as the sauce thickens. If you want it really thi...

I don't have much time so I think this is going to be the shortest post ever. Warm Fall Breakfast: Miso Ramen Soup. It's filling, it's nurturing, and it provides better energy for the day than cereal. When there isn't enough time in the morning to make eggs or bacon, it makes a nice, quick, hot meal. I don't remember the brand offhand but there are miso ramen packets at Whole Foods in the soups section. There are different flavors and they're really good! Highly recommended. Goes well with coffee and orange juice. Any other ideas for quick, warm Fall breakfasts?

Fast food seems not quite fast enough here these busy school days, so fast and furious food is more like it. In "spare" moments, like when I'm pushing Molly on the swings at the park and sort of zoning out, I've been thinking a bit about food, cooking, and food writing. I became bored with it pretty fast, and I think that's largely because there is a part of cooking that is just labor. For me, it is a huge part of it because I am always preparing food for my kids, one of whom is on a special diet. Still, here I am writing about food. Really fast. While scarfing down a spinach salad I just threw together with kidney beans, walnuts, cucumbers, and a simple lemon juice/olive oil dressing. The kids are at school right now, eating lunches we threw together this morning. Eli's latest craze is this pomegranate berry coconut water that comes in individual-size plastic bottles from Whole Foods. It's very low in carbs, and apparently really good for you as it is...

The new school year has begun, and my cooking style has turned upside down. Suddenly it is not about what would be interesting, fun, or new to cook. It is about what I can prepare in less then 30 minutes while simultaneously supervising math homework and playing Whac-a-Mole. Ideally....something everyone likes, and something healthy. This is taking some getting used to. I welcome ideas on this if anyone has any. For now, this is what I'm thinking: Pizza. Homemade pizza is the no-brainer dinner for me because it is so easy and everyone likes it. I get the refrigerated pizza dough from Trader Joes, and do some combination of cheese/vegetables/sometimes pepperoni or sausage. (Note: I'm calling it "homemade pizza," although I am not making the dough. Why do that, when Trader Joe's makes it for me?) Hot dogs. When it's not raining and we're not in the middle of a heat wave, I grill them outdoors. Same with sausages. Eli (on his special diet) can't have the ...

Our next stop was Cowgirl Creamery, where we were treated to a cheese tasting and talk by the cowgirl herself, co-founder Peggy Smith. We learned about and tasted some incredible cheeses. But I have to admit: I am a little intimidated by cheese. Or at least, talking about cheese. Oh, I like to eat it. But when you start talking about the history of it, how it's made, how the taste of milk varies throughout the month based on the cows' monthly cycles, etc., I'm like "What? Can we just taste it?" Maybe it's because I have never made cheese or even seen the cheese making process, so I don't feel as intimately connected to it as I might to some other foods. We tried a Mt. Tam cheese, which is made with whole milk and cream added to it, so in other words a LOT of fat. The next one we tried was very interesting - St. Pat's. It was wrapped in a nettle leaf and there was this whole story about how they came up with the cheese and the name. Something about how ...

On Wednesday, I was reminded of just how lucky I am to live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I am so fortunate to live a short drive and ferry ride away from the food heaven that is the Ferry Building Marketplace. I've been to the ferry building many times before, but this time I was part of a class sponsored by The Book Passage in Corte Madera. The class was Food Writing and Inspiration, taught by Joanne Weir , cookbook author, cooking teacher, and host of the PBS show "Joanne Weir's Cooking Class". So this time, I got to see it through Joanne's eyes. I have also never spent an entire day in the building, something one can easily do, with all there is to see and taste. Our group of nine started our day riding the ferry from Larkspur to San Francisco. On the ferry, we huddled around a big table on the lower floor. Joanne told us her story of how she got started in cooking, and how her food career blossomed. It was an inspiring and exciting story. We all then int...