Tag Archives: celery

Celery and Radish Salad with Avocado and Toasted Cumin Vinaigrette

Two items on the agenda today!  Well, three if you count the salad.

In fact, I can cover the salad ground briefly right now: it’s fresh, it’s seasonal, it’s healthy, it’s vegan, it’s crunchy and avocado-creamy, and it’s delicious.  It’s also completely self-explanatory, which allows me to talk about something else with you today.  Selfish, I know, but sometimes these things can speak for themselves…  Everyone knows that celery is especially eloquent.

Anyway, I was reading this lovely post by my friend Sara the other day, and it reminded me of something I thought of a while back and keep meaning to discuss.

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Succotash Chowder

Who has two thumbs and seems to get the most unfortunate colds midsummer?  This hot lukewarm mess, right here.  Hi.  Lately, I seem to breeze through winters with barely a sniffle, and when I do find myself lying in bed and confessing to the bottle of OJ I’m snuggling that I want to die, it just happens to be July.

The bright side of this particular bout of The Ickies was discovering that I may be psychic, as I made soup right before it hit me.  Soup in July–I know.  But: it’s corn.  Quintessential summer food, from the farmers’ market.  You don’t even have to get yourself sick to enjoy it, but if you do, add enough hot sauce to choke a (small to medium) black bear.  It’ll make you feel alive again.

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Marcella Hazan’s Minestrone alla Romagnola

If you’re not hopelessly nerdy like me, you probably won’t like this post and I’m totally sorry.  There is a fantastic (not bragging, because it’s not mine!) recipe for minestrone soup if you scroll down.

So, it goes like this: When I was juuust starting to cook as a thing–a hobby–I picked up Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking and started to read it as if it were a novel.  It’s a serious book for serious Italian cuisine, and soon enough, I came across this: “The least acceptable method of preparing garlic is squeezing it through a press.”

Uh oh.  I totally had (and used) a garlic press.

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