Homemade Greek Salad Dressing Recipe ♥

Today's easy homemade salad dressing recipe: How to make Greek salad dressing, a vinaigrette, really, with a short list of pantry ingredients.

So the English chef / food activist / TV personality Jamie Oliver has a crusade, he calls it Jamie's Food Revolution. But I have one too, it just doesn't come with a television show and a marketing budget. But it does fit right in with the Food Revolution's idea of changing one thing, just one thing, in our diets – to the good, by the way!

My crusade is to persuade home cooks to never buy salad dressing again. HA - I've actually accidentally written 'never MAKE salad dressing again' often enough that I've wondered if there might be a counter crusade mounted by the salad dressing manufacturers. But no, we don't make salad dressing at home because we're too busy, we don't know how, the bottles are convenient (albeit expensive), everyone can have their own favorite, we're not eating salads anyway – and on and on, just pick one.

This is such an easy dressing, I made it twice for the gorgeous Greek Bread Salad with Toasted Pita Chips. Oh so good and kid-friendly too! For the dressing, I was able to drop the oil to almost nothing, just a teaspoon, because of all the flavor and creaminess from the feta cheese.
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Greek Bread Salad with Toasted Pita Chips ♥ A Kid-Friendly Recipe

Today's vegetable salad recipe: A whole pile of vegetable color and crunch, interspersed with crisp homemade toasted pita chips. Kids like this! Low carb. Weight Watchers 1 point.

My friend Ann put out a stunning array of food for our book club last month. But it was the salad — oh, the colorful salad! — that caught my attention first. "My kids devour this salad," the mother of two preteen boys said. Really? A salad with so many vegetables and kids gobble it down?

Turns out, the trick is the Toasted Pita Chips. Now I may be a grown-up but here, I'm with the kids. The pita chips really do add something special: without them, this salad would be just some chopped vegetables tossed in Greek salad dressing. If you like Panzanella, the Italian bread salad, you'll love this one too.

BOOK CLUBS & READING GROUPS Speaking of book clubs, have you seen my reading group's book list? We've been reading together since 1994!
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Tofu-Salad Sandwiches ♥ Recipe for Vegan 'Egg' Salad

Today's vegetable sandwich recipe: A mixture of tofu and the usual suspects for egg salad, mayo, celery and the like. It makes up in just a few minutes and is surprisingly good! Better still, it's eminently variable based on what's on hand. Not just vegan, "Vegan Done Real". Low carb and just 1 or 2 points for Weight Watchers.

Is this feeling familiar, the feeling that you're just a little bit stuck, a tad bit uninspired, to cook? (Now baking, that I could do every day. But who needs another recipe for something sweet? Our recipe boxes, our waistlines, they're already plenty full of desserts.)

So I've been scanning my favorite cookbooks, hoping for inspiration then naysaying one recipe after another. Too fussy. Too expensive. Too many pots. Ingredients I don't have. Ingredients my usual groceries don't have. Too much fat. Too fru-fru. Yesterday I nixed every other recipe in the brand-new issue of Food & Wine (don't worry, it's a great issue, it's just me, right now) but then jumped on this simple mixture of silken tofu to make a chunky white sandwich spread, vegan! and just one Weight Watchers point, too. I expected to like it so-so, but thought it might give me a jump-start (aka a good ol' kick in the you know what) to get 'cooking' again.

Instead, I loved this stuff and already I've started thinking of ways to make it differently next time. I made open-face sandwiches for lunch yesterday but think it'll be great on toast for breakfast and might even slip into an omelet, say. I may never cook again.
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Whole Cauliflower with Homemade Cheese Sauce ♥ How to Cook a Whole Head of Cauliflower

How to cook a whole head of cauliflower, it's surprisingly unfussy! I like to drape mine in homemade cheese sauce, it makes for dramatic presentation, yes?

The sheer beauty of the vegetables arriving in the markets — that would be arriving from California and Mexico; that would be arriving in supermarkets, given that I write from Missouri, where gardeners worry whether there's still time to get cool-weather lettuces, peas too, into soggy gardens — some times stops me in my tracks. If I close my eyes, I can conjure them again, even many weeks later. Last winter, purple-topped turnips glistened in the mist. (Does your supermarket announce the start of the produce misters with a lively rendition of 'Singin' in the Rain'? Mine does!) A couple of weeks back, the eggplants were baby-bottom smooth, there was no not running a hand along their smoky curves. This week's vegetable miracle was a bin overflowing with perfect white heads of cauliflower, unblemished, taut with life.

When a beautiful head of cauliflower presents itself, I'm tempted to cook it whole, like my mother did, but the idea always seemed a touch fussy. Hardly! All it took was trimming the cauliflower (which has to happen anyway) and then cooking it in shallow boiling water for 20 minutes. Yes, that easy. And isn't it pretty?!!
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Roasted Broccoli with Lemon & Garlic ♥ Recipe

Until now, I just couldn't get roasting broccoli right. Turns out, it's as simple as can be, just roast the broccoli (careful knife work makes a difference but it's just the usual way of roasting fresh vegetables) but then, this is the trick, splash the broccoli with lemon juice. It makes all the difference. Low carb. Weight Watchers 1 or 2 points. Not just vegan, "Vegan Done Real".

There's a reason why a food blog about vegetables, yes, that's A Veggie Venture, has more than 1000 vegetable recipes but doesn't yet have one for something very basic, roasted broccoli. I've tried a half dozen times to like broccoli roasted in the oven, it just wasn't happening. I'd even reached the conclusion that while broccoli could be roasted, why waste a cruciferous bunch to the oven? I decided to give it one more try.

Turns out, the trick to roasting garlic is what happens after roasting, just a splash of lemon juice. I know, I know, call me the last person in the world to know this about broccoli and lemon. But. Now. I. Do. TOO.

TODAY'S SMILE People may love broccoli but sure can't spell it. Google searches often come in for 'brockley' and 'brockly'. Welcome, broccoli lovers! You've found the right place.

ROASTING VEGETABLES IS EASY! No recipes are required, just use How to Roast Vegetables: 15 Tips & a Master Recipe.
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Chayote Soup with a Kick ♥ Recipe from the Seasons of My Heart Cooking School in Oaxaca, Mexico

Today's soup recipe, a bisque, really, a creamy blend of chayote squash, onion, garlic and spinach and for that promised kick, roasted poblano. Serve it at room temperature or better still, chilled.

Last week when I published the recipe for my current favorite protein-rich brunch dish, Refried Bean Sauce with Eggs on Top at Kitchen Parade, I teased a little about someone attending the Seasons of My Heart cooking school outside Oaxaca, Mexico. Well, the secret's out: that lucky someone was me! (Remember those little Mexican jumping beans that used to be sold at dime stores? That was me, so excited about this day.)

The school is owned by the lovely Susana Trilling. Readers may know her cookbook, also called Seasons of My Heart and the 1999 PBS series called (menotes a theme here, you too?) Seasons of My Heart.

My brain is madly processing the day at Seasons of My Heart, the whole week really, even while my fingers pore through hundreds of photos, picking and cropping, all to build and frame the story, one plate, one dish at a time. More later ...

In the mean time, the soup, the soup! In the many-course meal at Seasons of My Heart, the soup wasn't the favorite (that, people, involves mounds of mangoes and pillows of cream whose recipe, I promise, will emerge some time soon) but it was the one dish we all imagined making most often. In the dim evening light of the Mexican high desert, the soup's color was a pretty pale green; mine today turned out decidedly more spinach green, which makes me think less spinach is a good idea.

In the grocery line, the woman behind me asked, "What will you make with the chayote?" I pointed to the poblano, "Chayote soup with a kick". She smiled. The chayote soup of her childhood, she remembered, was pale and bland. "How will you make it?" she asked. Here's how.
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How to Roast Potatoes to Perfection ♥ (Maybe) My Grandfather's Recipe for English Roasted Potatoes

A two-step technique for roasting potatoes that produces potatoes crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Not just vegan, "Vegan Done Real".

So I've been thinking about Chocolate & Zucchini's post for Perfect Roast Potatoes for two months now. Seriously, Clotilde, you stopped me in my tracks three ways. Such is the power of blogging, yes?!

THE BIG IDEA First, the idea of mastering, really nailing, the simple recipes you'll make again and again. Until now, my own practice has been all about variety, throwing noodles against the wall to see how each one sticks. That's well and good but what, you know, if you'd just like to roast some really good potatoes? You want to know exactly how to do that. Thank you, Clotilde, this idea has embedded itself in my brain, it won't let go.

SIMPLE IS GOOD BUT IT ISN'T ALWAYS BEST Second, Clotilde's recipe for roasted potatoes. Yes, it takes two steps and usually, I'm all about eliminating steps. But these are by far the crispiest, most evenly cooked roasted potatoes, to emerge from my oven. I've made them every couple of weeks since mid-January, they're fabulous. The lesson is, some times, not always but some times, a little extra effort pays huge dividends.

JUST MAYBE, A FAMILY CONNECTION Third, I call this Clotilde's recipe but all her commenters from Britain are asking, "Isn't this how everyone roasts potatoes?" In a funny way, I keep thinking that this is my grandfather's recipe for roast potatoes -- a grandfather who died when my mother was young, so not a man I knew, but he was English, and family lore says that he loved Sunday dinner's roast beef with roasted potatoes. What a funny recipe connection, this. If my Canadian family ever updates the family cookbook, I'll include this recipe and call it "Grampa's English Roasted Potatoes".

So what's the big deal about these roasted potatoes? Technique, technique, technique.
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