Archive for July 2012

In April, we outlawed hummus recipes from Small Kitchen College. I’m enamored of the healthful bean dip, but enough is enough. Our team of crack college writers seemed to eat pints of hummus daily, and to compensate for the repetition, they invented hummus in a million and one forms, from spicy green lentil hummus to hummus served hot. Naturally, college students and twenty somethings looking for healthful, cheap meals and snacks will turn to hummus on the rare occasions we tire of peanut butter. But over there, we had to move on.

Here on Big Girls, Small Kitchen, the hummus embargo does not apply. Lucky me! I make hummus from scratch as often as I can. Still, as much as I adore the classic, rich with tahini and olive oil, I can’t avoid experimenting-just like the collegiate cooks.

Sometimes that experimenting includes such far-fetched, totally un-hummus-y flavors as mint and lime.

Planning a picnic - tomorrow, the Fourth of July, or over the weekend at the beach? That’s my goal for the next few days: lots of eating al fresco, with friends. Of course sandwiches are the go-to picnic food. They come in their own little wrappers, making them transportable. To serve, you just plop a sandwich on a paper place, a much neater process than, for example, attempting to ladle out chili or cool soup on a blanket at the park with dogs and children running hilarious circles around you and the sun glaring down.

So, I’ve got sandwich inspiration here, from the cool spiced filling in my Curry Chicken Wraps to the vegetarian sultriness of a sandwich made with eggplant, white bean spread, and herbs. Stuff ‘em into a big Tupperware or fancy picnic basket if that’s more your style, then load up your thermos with lemonade, grab a blanket, and go.

This is a vegetarian recipe for a simple side dish. But how little that sentence does to describe the taste of a crisp-tender sugar snap pea that has marinated, after cooking, in a sweet and tangy sauce made from sesame seeds and gotten better the more of the Japanese-inspired flavor it soaks up. This is a vegetarian recipe for a a simple side dish that you will want to make again and again, for a sauce you will want to mop up with rice or bread or whatever carb’s handy, or just pour into your mouth.

Roles have reversed around here. For more than two years, I had a flexible schedule. I worked on the book and the site from home, rode the subway at length for meetings and freelance gigs around town, and always had the ability to make myself a homemade breakfast and lunch, and to cook Alex and me an awesome dinner. And then I decided to throw myself into my writing, to see where being a journalist in realms beyond food could take me, and for the summer, I’ve been working as a reporter. That means I leave home early and get home late. At the same time, a project Alex was on at work that kept him glued to his computer into the wee hours has finally subsided, and he’s finally catching his breath just as I gear up to go.