Adventures of a healthy-ish pseudo-foodie

Sorry, I didn't make you one. Fresh strawberries from the farmer's market, basil in the garden, and a hot lazy Sunday afternoon... what to do? Oh, I know! Make a delicious alcoholic drink. The Recipe:  2 strawberries per drink A few basil leaves 1 tb lemon juice, preferably fresh Ice Rum Sugar, to taste Muddle strawberries and basil in the bottom of each glass. Add lemon juice and a sprinkling of sugar. Add your desired ratio of rum, water, ice, and perhaps more sugar. DRINK IT.

I dare you to look at this and not crave seafood. I knew that at some point, the 22 pounds of tomatoes that I crushed and canned last summer would be gone. But when this time approached, I went into serious hoarding mode with the last few jars. It had to be a REALLY special recipe to warrant the use of one of these final jars. And then there was one. I loved this jar of tomatoes. It spent a couple of months of lonely existence on the shelf that used to hold all of its tomato friends. Finally, there was only about a month left until I knew I could get another 22 (or 30 or 40) pounds of tomatoes for more canning, and so I decided I could part with it. But only for the specialest of special recipes. Enter cioppino. Tomatoes fulfilling their destiny: swimming in red wine with some veggies. I pretty much follow  this recipe from Epicurious , except for substituting whatever seafood looks good that day. I don't think the taste could possibly be improved, and it...

Ridiculously healthy tastiness, served. You know when you go to the farmer's market and every single vegetable looks so good that you want to buy one of each, but you can't figure out how to possibly prepare them all before they go bad? Enter this versatile quinoa (or couscous) and adzuki bean (or any other bean) salad. The more veggies, the better. On this particular day, I had acquired: sugar snap peas, carrots, cherry tomatoes, red onion, and cucumber. Add to that some avocado, dried cranberries, mandarin orange slices, capers, and parsley from the garden, and we have the beginnings of something delicious. My only quinoa trick is to cook it in stock. It's 10 times better than it is in water. I've come to love adzuki beans, and they're extraordinarily good for you in their natural form (as opposed to in their sweet paste form in Japanese sweets). I boil them with a piece of kombu (which I acquired for this bean and rice recipe ) because I ...