Tuesday, March 30, 2010

You Never Know

Growing up, to put it nicely, I wasn’t much of a lentil person. My G-ma would make homemade daals, and I’d turn my nose up at them, or, more likely, it was the only thing to eat and I had to gulp it down as quickly as possible.

Lentils were just kind of boring. I couldn’t tell if they were a bean or not, (Truth? I still don’t really know what they are) but it was hard to register them in my head as anything good or worth liking. Then, it so happens, I grew up on some level and within the last year have actually started liking (!) and making (!!) lentil soup.

From The Vagabond Table


Yesterday, on a whim, I looked up the always-delicious blog Fresh 365, and saw a recipe for Warm Lentil Salad. I mean…it looked good. I just wasn’t craving to make it. At all. Nevertheless, I knew my roomie would like it, sent her the link, and off we went on a lentil-salad-crash-course. And friends, it was an easy ride, SO easy to make, in fact, that I almost didn’t believe it. Healthy, too. More importantly, it packed a certain “wow” factor that I wasn’t expecting at all, neither was Roni, and when we were munching away while watching The Time Traveler’s Wife (btw, movie was ok, book SO much better!), we had that “this is totally going into the permanent recipe” collection kind of lightning bolt. Yay us!

From The Vagabond Table
Lentils during Lent! My punny-ness is epic.

I love things that surprise you, that unbalance you, that force you to look at things in a new way. It could be a person you meet, a new activity, a book or, in this case, it could be as humble as a lentil salad….you just never know.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Springly Morning

Sometimes I’m just a hot mess. Or, a hot tamasha as my G-ma likes to say.

I really don’t have much of an excuse as to why I haven’t been posting here, except for the fact that I just haven’t been cooking as much, winter blues and blahs kind of snuck up on me, I lost my camera for a few weeks, and I had a whole post ready to go last week, when I realized I’d accidentally deleted the photos of said post at some point or other…. Yes. Like I said… sometimes I’m a hot tamasha.

No more! Spring is here!

I had a lovely day away from DC yesterday with Roni and some new gal pals, Catherine and Nikki, and we ventured to Harrisonburg, VA, home of James Madison University, great views of the Shenandoah Valley, and a few dudes from Old Crow Medicine Show (le sigh).

From Winter and Everything After

Basically we just ate and slept and talked and ate and read some books and ate some more, and, on the way home, Nikki’s lovely mother-in-law, Elsie, gave us some homemade strawberry jam to take with us. Oh, how the heavens sometimes open up and deliver a bit of summer in a jar!

Needless to say, I couldn’t wait to try it and nothing but fresh scones would do. I woke up this morning, turned to Alice Waters’ trusty tome, The Art of Simple Food, and found a perfectly scone-y scone recipe, simple, delicious, and perfect…perfect for the jam.

From The Vagabond Table

It’s a drizzly Sunday, with chilly early-spring rain that nudges you to stay indoors, listen to some Josh Ritter, and whip up some Apricot Scones. Scones that don’t actually take all that long to throw together, scones that bake in seventeen minutes, and scones that are rather chummy with hot coffee and, of course, strawberry jam.

From The Vagabond Table

Also, scones apparently originated in Scotland, so all morning I’ve been muttering things with a horrific Scottish accent, like “Oh-ho, there! I’ve got a wee-bit of jam to munch on these lovely Scones with!” and “Aye, it’s a bit o’drudgery out there, to be sure. But I’ve got this Scone, a spot of coffee, and I’m rarin’ to-go!”

From The Vagabond Table


…..like I said. I might be a hot tamasha, but at least I’m armed with a solid scone recipe, and that’s not bad. Not bad a’tall.