Roasted Daikon Radishes Made Easy

We had a bit of a busy kitchen day over at our house. I've more than a few items to share with you but thought I'd start with the easiest, Roasted Dakion Radishes.

I'm a sucker for fresh from the garden items. When there isn't any of that, I tend to commit to finding the freshest in season items at the market. I was stunned to see 3 arm length Daikon radishes for $.99 and knew I had to do something with them.

All I did was slice up the daikon radishes, red pepper and added baby carrots. I drizzled olive oil with a bit of chopped garlic.

Not only was this nummy dish a "set it and forget it" item, but I was thrilled to see the little stars in each radish slice!

This winter dinner item fit perfectly into my 8 week challenge as well as my daughter's move from being a vegetarian to vegan.

Recycle, Renew, Reuse; Mantra of An Eco-Friendly Life or Just Frugal?

As a child of the sixties, my formative years were filled with an awareness of how our actions affected our environment and the greater world.

As a child of WWII Holocaust survivors, my years were also filled with not taking anything for granted, and the ever present question "you have so much money?"

The two teachings served me well into adulthood and raising my own young impressionable minds. That is, until the teen years.

What was once Mom's great commitment to our world and all of us doing our part, became "that's ghetto".  Remembering how my then husband and I secretly made fun of his World War II generation parents and how his mother saved every piece of tin foil ever used, I felt a little hurt, a little ashamed, but mostly surprised that they reacted as any teen would.

Now most of my brood is out of their teens, some even raising families of their own. We share cycling tips, yoga stories, found-art crafting and vegetarian recipes while the younger boys snicker and reach for another rib, thank you very much.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not the local Zen Mother. I still participate in filling our landfills, eat meat on occasion, weigh more than the typical yoga girl (way more), and while I may have issues with over packaging I will still buy a product wrapped in unneeded layers when I should protest.

All this is leading up to my sheer joy in finding a resource online that my daughters and I could share on our daily forays into the produce aisles, washable produce bags. Reminiscent of the ditty bags we used to make in Girl Scouts these bags come in sets and are available online at: http://washableproducebags.com/

Take them to the market, use, wash, repeat. Renew, reuse - its that easy.

2012 Kicks Off With A Culinary Win

The last month of 2011 had me running to the market and to my Mom's constantly. As I bought fresh foods for her, she returned to the hospital just as frequently. In the midst of this cycle my kids were here and there (read: not home for meals), Holiday celebrations cancelled plus Dave and I too tired to do anything other than grab a quick something somewhere and fall into bed for sporadic cat naps with the cell phone tucked under the pillow.

Is it any wonder that I spent New Year's Eve scouring the web for yummy recipes that would use up the veggies-on-the-edge-of-forever in my fridge and not send me to the market, thus sending 2012 into a budget deficit?

Committed to creating a hearty breakfast or brunch that would send us to the hospital (post Football game of course) and see us through the visit with enough yummy in our belly that we did not succumb to the hospital cafeteria, I opted for VeganPiggy's Vegan Breakfast Burritos To Die For.

Since I had 6 packs of Tofu that I bought on sale for 59 cents in addition to all the veggies on hand this seemed like a winner. After swapping the carrots for broccolini, sautéing a few heirloom tomatoes in what I had left of shallots I had the happy experiment of omitting the salsa and using up what was left of Basiltops Vegan Pesto Habanero. We buy this at the Farmer's Market in Santa Monica but you can get yours at their online store. 

Did it work? I'll say. MeatatarianMan Dave happily helped himself to seconds and confirmed that this was a do-again. Yay! A kitchen victory so early in the year.

But wait! There's more. The all important Eagles game ended (Let's not go there), kids confirmed they would not be home and there was the emotionally exhausting hospital visit. No way did I want to cook. I just wanted to sit in a dinner and be served copious cups of coffee (say that 3 times fast). Hubby had other ideas, he wanted to go home. Ugh. What to feed upon? I threw the left over breakfast burrito innards into a big bowl of wild rice that I had forgotten to serve last night and added artichoke hearts, more tomatoes and the few mushrooms I had on hand.  No photos, but trust me - it looked great and tasted great too.

Dave liked this so much that he didn't ask for the Kelbasa he missed out on at breakfast and chose not to add the diced chicken breast I had set aside for him. Another win!