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I was given a copy of Deborah Madison’s “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone” about 8 years ago when I was in massage school. I have played around with it a few times.  After I graduated from massage school a few of my classmates and I would get together every month and one of us would host a dinner.  I put a crease in the books spine for a few of those dinners.  Though I have no idea what I made, I remember the complements. 

My mother, in her never ending quest to satisfy my out of control pickiness about my meals, played around with the cookbook a few times.  But most of the time it just served as a massive door stop for me.

Writing this food blog has made me want to start cooking again.  I just moved into a new house with a fabulous, never been touched before, kitchen.  I did not love my old kitchen.  In fact she fought me almost every day.  But my new kitchen, she had been yelling at me for over a week, “Take me and do with me what you will!”

I took her gently. And I found the Deborah Madison cookbook deep in some box in the garage because I left it behind and my roommate remembered to bring it with her.  And what I noticed was a whole bunch of ripped yellow legal notepad paper (from my attorney mother who LOVES her yellow legal note pads, NO LOVES THEM!).  She had marked a whole bunch of recipes, some which I remember her making me and maybe the rest she planned on using in the future. I am not real good a following a recipe, but I thought it would be good to try. 

Since I haven’t made it to the market (other than to buy snacks  for my beach adventure with Marcy yesterday) since I moved in, tonight’s dinner was all about fishing out what food made it from the old apartment to the new house.  Most of what I could salvage was shiitake mushrooms, button mushrooms, cremini mushrooms and portabella mushrooms.   Now that’s variety.

Here we go…this picture…this is what I ended up with on the first go-round.  Burnt Butter.  I swear I thought I could cook. 

My Sailor tells me I can. But is he just doing that so he doesn’t have to?

>It is strange for me to live in a place where people think being lakeside is being at the beach. I grew up twenty minutes from the shore (not the beach) in NJ and when I lived in Hawaii, well you can figure it out. I don’t really know how to explain how I feel about the beach, but every woman in my family knows exactly what I mean. I don’t just love the beach, part of me always lived there. I downloaded “music” from iTunes that is just waves gently crashing on the shoreline on a beach on Kauai while doves call to each other in the background. I can listen to that for HOURS. And if I owned a heat lamp, I might turn that on too and pretend I am actually at the beach.

My friend Marcy is from Tuscon. They don’t have beaches there, I don’t think they even have water. She knows of a secret beach here in Seattle. We decided it was time to escape reality and all things homework for the day. We brought trashy magazines, summer reading type books and a rainbow of delicious snacks.

The way I was raised, when you went to the beach, you packed a lunch. Not just any old lunch. The kind of lunch that could last from 9am until 6pm. Every yummy snack you could think of, but healthy ones. We are not talking potato chips here, you could buy that on the boardwalk (an explanation of boardwalk food will have to be a whole other post at some point).

I told Marcy to just pack some snacks that she might want and I pack some more. Let’s see we had salsa, guacamole, chips, fresh carrots broccoli, cauliflower and snap peas, hummus, cheese, crackers, garlic stuffed olives, cherries, strawberries, blueberries and chocolate. And Marcy may not have been all that new to this idea, she packed a bottle of red wine.

It was the perfect day. We talked, we read, we eat, we relaxed and went we home that night ready to face the next week of graduate school with clear heads!

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I really enjoyed that egg salad that I didn’t want to share with anyone. It was well worth my selfishness.

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This is an article I wrote that never ended up getting published…

Of the over forty choices available, one of most meaningful definitions of spring could be, “to be released from a constrained position.” We often spend much of our winters in the coziness of our homes.  The days are short, the comfort foods are plenty. But as the day fights the night for attention and our sun starved bodies begin to shed their warm layers, our food choices are also released from their constrained position.

March brings with it asparagus, beets, strawberries, and rhubarb.  April reacquaints us with artichokes, green beans and mangoes. May continues to awaken our senses with peppers, spinach and melons. Fresh fruits and vegetables in vibrant colors help to release us from the habit of “stick to your ribs” winter stews, roasted meats and potatoes and all the other winter foods that help keep us comfortable during those long winter nights. With Spring, everything awakens and comes alive with the bright sunshine we had been missing.

All these delicious colorful foods aren’t just pretty on the plate, but contain varying amounts of hundreds of thousands of bioactive compounds. Many of these phytonutrients are highly beneficial in fighting inflammation in the body. Inflammation can be triggered in the body by a number of factors in including stress, viruses, bacteria, physical trauma and temperature extremes.  Chemical messengers called cytokines activate the immune system and can send it into over drive. In the body, the constant state of inflammation can lead to chronic disease. The phytonutrients that are contained in spring’s colorful bounty act to squelch the cycle of inflammation and help ward of chronic diseases such as arthritis, type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, cancers, asthma, allergies and irritable bowel disease.

Now that the sun is shining and the temperatures are on the rise, head out to your local farmers market (find one in your area at localharvert.org). Pick a rainbow of fruits and vegetables and incorporate them into your meals.  If you are unfamiliar with something, ask the vendor to suggest what you could do with it. Make a vibrant mixed salad, add them to soups, or make a fresh fruit sorbet for dessert. No one in your family would ever guess that you are feeding them a prescription for a healthy body.

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“Harry, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it. Don’t wait for it. Just let it happen. It could be a new shirt at the men’s store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot black coffee. ” – Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan)

>Lilacs always remind me of my mother.  The smell or the bushes in full bloom.  Growing up we had a two bushes in the back yard and she loved those things.  As soon as they started blooming she would be out in the yard trimming small bunches off for the kitchen table.

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>It isn’t often that I get to share meals with my Sailor. And because we see each other so infrequently, we go ALL OUT when it comes to Food. And I mean all out, I swear that is where all our money goes.