Oh hey there, it's been a minute. Since I last posted, I've had a few things going on. I published a really fun book. Oh, and I had a baby.

Yup. A really cute one.

I spent the first 17 weeks of my pregnancy throwing up all day long ("morning sickness" is a misnomer to say the least), the next 15 weeks feeling pretty okay, and the remaining 9 weeks (she arrived about a week past her due date) fighting a weird cough and some lovely acid reflux. 

But then, she made her arrival and our lives were forever changed. I was treated to home cooking and takeout, thanks to some lovely friends who organized a meal train on our behalf, plus cooking courtesy of my generous mom who stayed for a week after Anna was born, to provide extra support. But once our core crew of friends and relatives had visited, held the baby (after washing their hands, obvs), and then bid us goodbye and good luck, I knew I needed to get back in the kitchen.

I know it sounds weird, but after our reality was permanently altered by the addition of the cutest human ever by way of a major medical event (giving birth is no joke!), plus the fact that I went from being just a regular person who happened to have boobs to a full-service dairy farm/breastaurant, I wanted to get back to preparing my own food -- it helped to resume something from our previous life.

Oh, and I had a bunch of fun new dietary restrictions. Yup, for the first four or so months of her life, Anna had reactions to my milk when I ate dairy, eggs, nuts, soy, wheat, or citrus, so basically everything tasty. 

Between having less time, fewer hands to cook/eat with at once, and a slew of foods on the "no" list, I knew I had to come up with something nutritionally dense but easy to keep on hand, and so this soup was born, so to speak (well, reborn, I guess--I've made more than a few pureed root vegetables soups in my time, and on this blog). 

The genius of it is that it's actually incredibly simple--just some orange root veggies, whatever you've got on hand, plus garlic, ginger, and broth or water. The fun comes in the garnishes, and that means built-in versatility. I like to make a big pot of it and divide it into storage containers that stay in the fridge. When naptime rolls around, I heat up a little bit, and then jazz it up depending on my mood. My current favorite combination, which I've eaten pretty much every day in the past week is a little gochujang paste, a swirl extra virgin olive oil, a few drops of sesame oil, sliced scallions, and toasted sesame seeds. I also love a little miso paste and a handful of chopped cilantro. But just about everything (including just a small shower of black pepper and a pinch of flaky salt, or even nothing at all) is delicious.

I usually eat it with a toasted English muffin topped with egg salad (eggs are, thankfully, back on the menu now) and the baby monitor in close view.

And the best part? It's a very family-frieindly food :-) 

 

I almost didn't post this recipe. 

I wasn't thrilled with the above photo of the finished dish (we were in a rush to eat dinner and the light wasn't the best, so I just snapped a few and figured I'd edit them to my liking, but none were particularly great), and if you know anything about food blogs, you know the photos are a pretty big part of why people are compelled to read a post. 

But then, two bites into my first Cauliflower Queso Fundido-stuffed taco, embellished with a little guacamole, cilantro, and a few slivers of bright, crunchy shallot, I decided you needed to have this recipe ASAP, and I needed to get over myself. Maybe I'll reshoot the photos one day when I have more time (or next week, when I inevitably make this again). Or maybe I won't, and that will be okay too.

Sometimes it's hard not to overthink appearances. If you spend much time on social media (and if you're reading this, I'm guessing you do--or you are an older relative of mine who checks this website every few weeks to see what I'm up to, and if so, hi! I love you!) you are familiar with the bizarre, Instagram-filtered, scarily perfect world it can sometimes feel like. I almost never do my nails, but on the wrong day, a scroll through my Insta feed will have me convinced I need a gel French manicure STAT (or to get bangs, or to lose 15 pounds, or to start using self-tanner, or to somehow afford an all-white marble kitchen re-do...). I love looking at pretty pictures, but I don't always love how too much of it makes me feel about my own life.

But then comes a realization: photos are just moments. They're never the whole picture, so to speak. And sure, in the right moment, in the right light, with the right filter, things can *seem* intimidatingly perfect. The important thing to remember is that most likely, the reality is flawed, dimpled, messy, and yeah, maybe a little ugly, because that's how life works. But in this case, no bad lighting or less-than-beautiful beauty shot can take away from just how delicious this cheesy, melted, slightly spicy cauliflower thing is. 

It starts, as so many of my favorite things do, with a rimmed baking sheet of cauliflower and chopped onions in olive oil with salt and pepper.

Roast 'em until they're tender and brown.

Then layer them in a shallow, heavy-bottomed pot (or a cast iron or a baking dish), with roasted green chilies and cheese.

One more layer.

Pop it under the broiler and top with fresh cilantro.

You could just dive in with a fork or a crunchy chip, but my fave way to eat this is rolled in warm corn tortillas with all the fixings. You won't miss the meat.

Taco magic.

P.S. This is a slab of marble, not an actual marble countertop. I don't know any bloggers who actually have fancy marble countertops. We're literally faking every surface we purport to put food on. Who eats tacos right off the counter anyway? 

I attended elementary school in the early heyday of the Lunchable, AKA the ultimate cafeteria lunchtime trade item. Tiny plastic cartons with dividers separating a stack of cheddar cheese, a stack of golden butter crackers, and some slimy pink lunchmeat (usually turkey or ham) were the Hidden Valley Elementary School fourth grader's ticket to trading her way to an optimal lunch. It was the lunchbox equivalent of a royal flush.

My lunchbox, on the other hand (My Little Ponies from first through third grade, scrunchy brown bags with my name scrawled on them, so as to not look like such a baby from fourth grade onward), with its sprouted, meatless contents never got me far in the midday meal barter game. My mother, who had embraced the whole-foods-bulk-bin-health-food-co-op approach to food in the 1980s, packed my lunch with the kinds of life-affirming foods nutritional gurus like Drs. Weil and MacDougall would have given their stamp of approval: apple "purses" (whole apples, cored and filled with peanut butter and raisins), rice cakes, sliced vegetables (she tried to get me excited by calling them "crudité," as if I cared about seeming chic and french while I ate my carrot sticks at recess), and today's subject: eggless egg salad, a creamy blend of soft tofu, turmeric (for flavor and egg-like color), onions, celery, a little mayonnaise and fresh dill. She would pack it in a little Tupperware container, with crackers (obviously not Ritz--think brick-like, seeded, bran-heavy crackers) or on a sprouted whole wheat bagel.

While I craved the sort of schoolyard clout that came with having Lunchables in my lunch (other big ticket items: fluffy, crustless white bread and American cheese sandwiches, Oreos, and any sort of flavored chip or cheese puff), I secretly loved my hippie lunches. But the other kids teased me for eating tofu (then a relatively uncommon food in American households) and so I often took to eating them in the girls' bathroom to avoid taunting. And despite my actual preferences, I asked my mother to pack me something a little more "normal" so as to spare me being called, "Tofu Girl" at lunchtime.

"That is a very stupid nickname and there is no way I'm giving you white bread and chips for lunch, Gabrielle," she told me. Gabrielle, my full first name, was what she called me when she meant business. "Just ignore the teasing and eventually they'll get bored and stop."

I pushed back. "But nobody will ever trade with me if you keep giving me all this healthy stuff!" 

"Good," she replied. "I don't want you eating their crappy food anyway."

I sighed. Eggless egg salad it was, and thus began my first lesson on the wisdom of doing something that doesn't look cool and doesn't win me any popularity points, but is the right thing to do anyway. The next day I decided to start eating lunch in the cafeteria again, opting out of the lunchtime trade. And she was right: I ignored the teasing and it eventually it stopped. 

So here's to my mom, and all moms, who stood their ground, when it would have been so much easier to just give in to their whining children. They taught us to be strong, to be true to ourselves, and to eat our gross-looking lunches out in the open, despite the naysayers. 

Eggless egg salad is one of my favorite quick vegetarian protein sources, even to this day. It starts with soft tofu (you could use medium or firm tofu, but it won't have that egg-white-like texture, plus celery, shallot (you could use regular or green onions too), fresh dill, plus cayenne for spice, and turmeric for flavor and egg-like color.

You smush up the tofu so it looks like crumbled hard-boiled eggs. This part is fun.

Stir everything together, with a little mayonnaise and mustard to bind and flavor it, as well as a little salt and pepper.

Let it chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (this improves the texture). 

Eat on a toasted bagel (or on lightly dressed greens, or with crackers or "crudité," or by itself). Listen to your mom. Ignore the haters.

I've been thinking a lot about moderation lately. It's such an appealing concept, to eschew extremes and live in the middle, in a happy medium, where, like a 2017 Goldilocks, you have just enough (and not too much) of everything. 

In reality though, like everything else, saying you do something "in moderation" is actually much easier than actually putting it into practice, especially when it comes to food. Let's say you want to reduce the amout of sugar you eat and so you decide to make after-dinner treats something you only have in moderation. It's a breeze to say you "eat dessert in moderation" (look at you, you're so in control yet relaxed and fun!), but then friends come over for dinner one night and of course you're gonna serve dessert. But they don't finish it all, so you're left with unfinished ice cream in your freezer or half a cake on your counter. What are you going to do, throw it away? Of course not. So you eat dessert every night for a week because, well, you ought to finish it, right? And once that week is up, it's tempting to just pick up more ice cream and cake the next time you go shopping, because suddenly it's a habit. 

But we also know just completely swearing off dessert isn't the way to go, because as soon as a you make a particular food "bad" you only want it more, and that's not helpful (anyone who has ever vowed not to pick up the phone when someone you desperately want to sleep with but know you shouldn't even talk to calls knows how this feels). What, are you going to arrange your life so you're never in the same room as dessert (or "Don't Pick Up!!!")? Of course not. You just resolve, again, to have less of it.

But for the moments when that's not easy, here's my proposition: instead of completely giving in to unhealthy treats in excess and then starting the whole cycle over the next week, why not modify them a bit so they don't entirely derail your progress, thereby making it easier to stay on track? Take, for example, today's recipe: a traditional mac + cheese that happens to be about 60% roasted cauliflower.

This is not some bullshit low-fat sauce, nor do I deign to suggest that cauliflower is a reasonable substitute for pasta. I would never insult you like that. This contains both a decadent, legit cheese sauce and real macaroni--it's just tempered with a hefty dose of roasted cauliflower. It's not "healthy" per se, but it's a whole lot more so than the regular stuff. Also, because cauliflower contains so much sating fiber, you may find (as I did), that one smallish bowl is all you need.

It's not exactly Easy Mac, but it's not much harder. Start with cauliflower cut into smallish florets--ones about the same size as the pasta you're using. Toss them with olive oil and a touch of salt (be careful with the salt in this recipe, as each element gets salted individually and the cheese is salty--taste as you go.

While it roasts, cook a little pasta in salted boiling water and make a classic cheese sauce.

Fold the cooked cauliflower and pasta into the cheese sauce and add just a little bit of this recipes secret ingredient: the pasta's cooking water. 

Scrape it into a baking dish and pop it in the oven for about 20 minutes.

A touch of parsley and some chili flakes are all it needs.

The most delicious way to honor your cravings and your resolve at the same time.

I didn't really start dating until junior high (and I use the word "dating" loosely--it was mostly just note-passing and hand-holding), but from the time I was in kindergarten, I always harbored at least one crush--usually a secret one, disclosed only to my closest girlfriends and usually my mom. I almost never shared my feelings with the object of my affection (way too scary!), but my feelings would churn and build inside, rendering me distracted and flustered whenever I encountered my crush of the moment.

But despite my in-the-flesh nervousness, there was no denying that having a crush made my day-to-day so much more fun. Whether I was re-routing my walk from biology to algebra so I could pass by a certain someone's locker, or doodling our names next to each other on my lab notebook (though, even in the marriage fantasies of my youth, I kept my last name), the preoccupation was more energizing than depleting.

As I got older and started to develop passions other than boys, I found I recognized the dizzy, slightly obsessive thought patterns that surrounded my artistic process. When I was excited about a play I was acting in or a piece I was writing, I'd once again encounter that familiar high school crush-like frenzy, only instead of Trevor from Western Civ, I'd become fixated on my project du jour, mulling over every detail, imaginging my future with the project.

I'm sure you're not surprised to learn that recipes and ingredients fall into the crushable category as well (remember my cauliflower obsession of 2015?). I tend to discover a dish or ingredient, and then cook it over and over again until I'm either sick of it (almost never happens) or I feel like I've perfected it. My current food crush is these garlicy sweet potato fries. Instead of the orange-fleshed garnet yams I usually use, I'm using the sweet potatoes I just cannot get enough of lately: purple-red skinned, beige-interior Japanese sweet potatoes (which are very good for you, and will apparently make you as beautiful as Olivia Munn's BTW). These have the sweet, nutty flavor of yams, but the baking integrity and firmness of regular potatoes, making them the most perfect oven fry sweet potato, in my opinion.

I like to use ones that are roughly the length I want my fries to be, and I never peel them (the skin is full of nutrients and I like its texture). I just cut them into relatively thin fries.

I toss them in olive oil, sprinkle them with salt, and bake until they get brown and crispy. Then I let them cool--do not skip this step! It helps make them crispy.

I toss them with the fixings of the ball park garlic fries my dad and I used to share at baseball games (because like all of my crushes, they remind me a little bit of my father): another drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, a touch of salt, chopped raw garlic, parsley, and Parm.

They're the perfect side for burgers, tacos, or even scrambled eggs. Try them tonight and get ready to start crushing.