Easy Mini Kale Pizzas ♥ (Spaghetti Sauce "Doctored" with Kale)

Today's easy kale recipe: For sweet little mini pizzas, just "doctor" a jar of a favorite spaghetti sauce with cooked kale, then top as you like. Super easy and surprisingly tasty. For anyone who wants to sneak healthy leafy greens into the family diet, mini pizzas are a great place to start. The sauce itself has virtually no calories at all and zero Weight Watchers points and is not just vegan, "Vegan Done Real". And a Mini Kale Pizza? Under a hundred calories!

For cookbooks that really "teach" and "challenge", my favorites tackle a single subject and explore it deep and broad. So it goes with KALE: The Complete Guide to the World's Most Powerful Superfood by Stephanie Pedersen. (DISCLOSURE KALE's publisher provided a complimentary copy but the thoughts, as always, are my own.)

Stephanie's personal story is compelling. She was pregnant on 9/11 and was exposed to a "massive amount of toxins" which were passed onto her son, who was born with heavy metal poisoning which caused a mix of skin, digestive, sensory, sleep and mood disorders. When she began rebuilding his immune system, kale purée was a mainstay. She also used kale to overcome her own many health issues. I don't very often "read" cookbooks – call me guilty of skipping straight to the recipes – but I found her introduction to kale much absorbing. Is kale a miracle food? You kind of get that idea. This book isn't written by someone who loves kale but by by someone who thinks kale may have saved her life.

But I totally l-o-v-e the idea of mixing kale into a jar of spaghetti sauce! Taste-wise, the strong flavors of the tomato sauce almost "hide" the kale. The pretty red color of spaghetti sauce doesn't survive, however, with the kale it turns to a dark (but not unappealing) red color.

Perfect Rhubarb Pie ♥ Recipe

Today's favorite pie recipe: All-rhubarb pie recipe from pie master Anne Dimock. Perfect balance of sweet and tart and cinnamon. My 'go-to' recipe for plain rhubarb pie although it's hardly 'plain'.

~recipe & photo updated & republished 2013~
~more recently updated recipes~

As a pie-maker since age 16, I couldn't resist Anne Dimock's book Humble Pie: Musings on What Lies Beneath the Crust when first published last year. Over the winter, I slowly nibbled through the chapters, savoring every page, considering apples and blueberries and rhubarbs, wondering if I might ever — ever ever ever — attain Pie Queen status.

But it took timing — her Straight-Up Rhubarb Pie being published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine and a big supply of Canadian Red rhubarb (many many thanks to my Auntie Meryl!) — to help me deliver three perfect rhubarb pies in all of two weeks.

The first pie, we groaned with pleasure. The second pie, we ate in silent appreciation. The third pie, we laughed over with new cooks (my nephews, ages 16 and 14!) and new friends (N and V!). This pie has sooo much going for it.

Sweet Potato Curry with Red Lentils, Roasted Peppers & Spinach ♥ (Slow Cooker or Stovetop)

Today's vegan main dish or side dish, cooked either in a slow cooker or on the stovetop, an almost-creamy mix of chopped sweet potatoes and red lentils, spiked for a touch of heat with green curry paste. Just before serving, stir in roasted red peppers and fresh spinach. Just gorgeous, really. Low carb. Weight Watchers 3.5 or 5 points. A great choice for Meatless Monday, any meal of the day. Not just vegan but "Vegan Done Real".

This recipe is brought to you against all odds and prevailing winds.

A "Pinterest Cook" No More I had such great confidence when the kitchen remodeling started. "I'll cook every day," I promised myself. Right. Within days, I turned into a "Pinterest cook" - that's someone who "cooks" by pinning one recipe after another without ever actually lighting the stove let alone chopping an onion. Then the other night, I couldn't sleep, my brain-on-busy overwhelmed by pesky kitchen details like, Will the countertops be in by our June 29th party deadline? and What should I do with the backsplash? and What about colored glass for the new light fixture?. I was scrolling through Pinterest when it hit me that all the ingredients for this gorgeous sweet potato curry were collected in the kitchen, postponed from dinner when drywall dust was flying. Five minutes later, the stove was on, the onion was chopped and I felt so calm, so at peace cooking again, albeit at three in the morning. Six hours later, we ate this for breakfast, wishing there were eggs in the house for an "egg on top". Even the kitchen contractor and the electrician dug in with big spoons, everyone gave it "thumbs up".

The Disappearing Memory Card On Sunday, I sat down to upload the pictures and write the recipe when, alas, the memory card slipped between the cushions of a chair! Even after turning the chair upside down, slicing it open from the underside, there was no retrieving the memory card. Thank goodness, I was more than happy to make this sweet potato curry again. Did I mention it was gorgeous?!

Low-Calorie, Low-Point Healthy, Vegan Staples Careful readers will notice that ever since I started (and finished, after losing 35 pounds and feeling GREAT) Medifast (details here), I've been adding 50- and 100-calorie quantities to all new recipes and older recipes as I update them. This is because now that I've replaced Medifast food with my own real food, I want big-flavored, healthy foods in 100-calorie increments. I've been doing this for about two months now and l-o-v-e the energy and satisfaction that eating four small meals a day (plus a main mail and a before-bed small meal) adds to my life. This recipe? It's a total win for that purpose. In a few months, I'll write a post called, "How I Switched from Medifast Food to Real Food" with all the details but in the mean time, I'm still figuring it all out!

Farro with Asparagus & Green Onion Sauce ♥

Today's simple vegetarian supper recipe: Asparagus cooked with the lovely grain called "farro" and topped with a simple and most surprising green onion sauce. My version of Heidi Swanson's recipe has been "lightened" considerably, reducing the calories, carbs and Weight Watchers points.

~recipe & photo updated & reposted 2013~
~more recently updated recipes~

2007 ORIGINAL POST I'm betting that when Heidi Swanson titled her new cookbook Super Natural Cooking, by 'super natural' she meant something other than (1) three hours of afternoon errands (2) feeling oh-so-tempted to pick up supper somewhere, anywhere, on the way home (3) deciding otherwise and (4) then, the payoff, 30 minutes later, sitting down to a fast, delicious and healthful meal. (And colorful! Look at that plate!) In my book, anyway, one definition of 'supernatural' is helping us successfully battle the lure of the drive-through. Thank you, Heidi!

In fact, Heidi did mean something else by Super Natural, as the subtitle reveals: Five Ways To Incorporate Whole and Natural Ingredients into Your Cooking.

Heidi's cookbook is a thinking cook's friend, one to challenge your pantry along with your brain. I'm just beginning to explore its concepts and its recipes but if the farro/asparagus combination is any prediction, this is destined to be a favorite cookbook, perhaps one of my very own 101 Cookbooks (yes, that's Heidi's food blog/website).

Rhubarb Recipes ♥ Alphabet of Vegetables

Hello Vegetable Lovers: Over the next while, watch for some housekeeping with the Alphabet of Vegetables here on A Veggie Venture. The goal is to separate out our "most favorite" vegetables so their pages will load more quickly, handy for all but especially those of us who check for recipes on our phones. ~Alanna

PS Facebook & Pinterest users, if you love A Veggie Venture, be sure to "like" and "pin" this page! More and more, search engines and even real-live human beings rely on social media indicators to identify favorite sources of trusted information.

RHUBARB: THE BASICS
Pronounced [ROO-barb]. Also called "Pie Plant".

The rhubarb season is "spring and early summer". The rhubarb plant is technically a vegetable but its crisp, sour stalks are most often cooked like fruit with sugar. Like celery ribs, rhubarb stalks are long and smooth, sometimes thin and sometimes thick, sometimes pale green and best of all, "rhubarb red" – my favorite color! A rhubarb's triangular leaves are inedible at best, toxic at worst. Rhubarb is especially appreciated in the Midwest and Scandinavia, especially the red varieties that add glorious color to pies, muffins, cobblers and other treats.

RHUBARB: BASIC TIPS & TECHNIQUES
How to make rhubarb jam
How to make rhubarb pie
How to make rhubarb sauce
How to roast rhubarb

Mark Bittman's "Salted" Chopped Salad ♥

Today's new vegetable salad recipe: Mark Bittman's chopped salad recipe, the one from last week's New York Times, the kind of salad you can make every few days, adding and subtracting vegetables as you see fit. Healthy. Low carb. Low points. Not just vegan, "Vegan Done Real".

Michael Pollan's new book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation is on my read-soon wishlist. It rethinks our adventures in the kitchen, following four elemental ways of cooking.

FIRE That's captured fire like a gas or electric stove or the open flame of wood fire.
WATER That's boiling and braising.
AIR That's baking. (Have you ever thought of an oven as just a small furnace? Me either.) It's also air-drying thin-thin layers of meat, say, as the Swiss and other Europeans do.
EARTH That's the action of fermentation, whether cooking up some homebrew or making cheese.

Peeling and chopping, slicing and dicing, these are the constants of a vegetable lover's kitchen, the acts that come before Earth, Wind, Water and Fire. This salad takes more than the usual measure, leaving time to consider which element of cooking would be applied here, when salt is applied to "cook" the vegetables just enough to soften and infuse with freshness and flavor. I suppose, yes, it must be "Earth"?

Party Asparagus with Aioli ♥ Two Classic Recipes

Today's recipes: How to cook and shock fresh asparagus to retain the bright green color and enhance the natural asparagus flavor for serving chilled. How to make aioli, the classic sauce. Great for parties, buffets, composed salads.

~recipe & photo updated 2011, republished 2013~
~more recently updated recipes~

First the asparagus. At Easter, my favorite dish at a magnificent brunch prepared by a former White House chef and recent Silver Toque winner was, um, yes, the asparagus. Aiii it was good – arrayed on huge platters, stems peeled halfway to the tips and perfectly salted. At first, I thought there might have been garlic in the cooking water. The chef sniffed at that idea so hmm, perhaps not. At home, it took three tries and three pounds of asparagus to get the salt balanced properly. Yes, I concede, dozens of spears were sacrificed to get the salt right. (2011 Update: Chef Chambrin is the source of the recipe for Raspberry Bliss, my first column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch!)

SALT It's another ingredient with (in my mind) an undeserved bad reputation. Because salt is "bad" for us, we cook rice and pasta and eggs and – heavens, vegetables – with minimal salt and even – horrors – without salt. Our bodies require salt. My solution, my rationalization? If we'd all just nix prepared and commercial food – and their high, high proportions of sodium – then it seems to me, we can let loose with salt for food cooked at home. I'm not a nutritionist so please don't violate a doctor's order. But I'd love to know – is salt a good thing or a bad thing in your world? How much salt would you use to cook a pound of asparagus?