So usually, these winter days yield endless cravings for hearty soups, lots of carbs, and - let's be honest here - many glasses of red wine. But some mushroom risotto, kale and farro soup and half a bottle of malbec later, I'm beginning to crave something fresh and summery - something to shake me out of the mid-winter blues when I wake up to a day like this:



Enter a delicious salad of the slaw persuasion with red cabbage, crunchy romaine, shredded carrots and perfectly ripe avocado. All of a sudden, the day is looking a little bit brighter.

grazie Rachel Love

I've been listening to James Blake's self-titled album non-stop all weekend. The first time I listened to it, I cried at four different times. The entire album is beautifully constructed. This song especially gets to me:

time travel

Milano made me feel glamorous the same way NYC does. Except right now, my beloved city is covered in disgusting grey slush piles. Even the classiest of black-and-white photos could not remedy this.

ragazzi

I got on the train the other day and was immediately greeted by a group of loud Italian teenagers. They were so undeniably Italian, in fact, that I froze up and was momentarily convinced that I had teleported back to Milan instead of boarding the R train as I had meant to do. To me, there is something so recognizable about Italian teens (at least the ones in Florence and Milan). I knew I would fail at describing it, so I took a secret picture instead.

bad vegan!

The transition from omnivore to vegan was pretty easy for me, mostly because I have never been a big dairy eater. I don't even like butter (except in baked goods). And I like eggs, but mainly in a scramble to hold together a mass amount of leftover vegetables. So giving them up was pretty much just like any other day.

This doesn't mean I don't love cooking with eggs and butter. In fact, I relish it. And now that my 19-year-old cousin is staying with us, I have an enthusiastic recipient of all things I decide to bake and cook him. I had to lure him out of bed with something the other day, so I decided to make him the mother of all breakfast sandwiches, with ham, pepperjack cheese, and a fried egg on sourdough bread, which had been grilled to delicious, melty perfection in vast amounts of butter.

Recipes for 2011

I got seven (7!!!) cookbooks for Christmas, and it reminded me that I really need to start making lists of recipes I want to try. These are a few of the ones that I've come across online recently that I really need to make*.

Green Olive Gnocchi
Roasted Eggplant Soup
Linguini with Tomato-Almond Pesto
Rustic Winter Stew with Polenta
Fig and Olive Tapenade
Farro Salad with Mushrooms
Farfalle with Golden Beets
Vegan Pot Pie

*Note: All of these recipes are either vegan or easily adaptable to a vegan diet, which is part of why I'm so excited to make them. Yay veggies!