Carrot Halwa

This is the ultimate comfort dessert for me; very filling, thanks to the carrots, with a nice texture and not overly sweet taste. I found the recipe on YouTube, it's part of the cooking instruction series called Manjula's Kitchen. She's starting her own website, but currently the bulk of the videos/recipes are on YouTube. The recipe is easy and pretty quick (it's just carrots, sugar, milk (whole!), a little butter, and a pinch of cardamom). The only change I made was to heat the milk on the stove instead of in the microwave, so maybe that's why it took me longer to reduce it down once it was added to the carrots. Worth the wait!

Meet Red Lentils

Orange comfort food for the day: a red lentil soup. Well, the original looks like soup, mine is edging towards stew. It's from Eat Peace Please, a food blog I've been digging on lately. Even leaving the garlic and chili flakes (and bell pepper) out, it was a tasty introduction to red lentils. I wonder where these lentils were grown. Maybe Canada--according to Wikipedia, it's the largest export producer of lentils.

Aloo Gobi

I think I've unconsciously made the theme of November the color orange. I've been made fun of for having "gruel" as my favorite food texture, from dryish oatmeal dishes to thick lentil stews, so I'm fully prepared for any teasing that may come with this declaration of color preference. It should be green, right? If I were a good person, it would be green--there are so many great green veggies to be had. But it's not green, it's orange.

This simple, quick, and tasty recipe hails from One Hot Stove. I was forced to stray from the recipe a little because I was out of cumin seed, but I just added extra ground cumin. Some of the photos bordered on yellow, but that was a trick of the light. It definitely fits with the theme.

Sweet Potato Fries

Recipe (with great photos) from Kalyn's Kitchen. The sweet potatoes are coated with olive oil and a spice mix of coriander, fennel, oregano, some hot pepper, and salt, then baked at 425. They remain pretty soft, but I like the flavor. Kalyn recommends cranking the oven heat if you're trying for crispy.

Home Is Where The Veggies Are

Yep, I'm back in Evanston, IL after an amazing three and a half months at Kings Valley Gardens in Oregon. It's been a bit of an adjustment (to say the least--my new roommates don't really eat vegetables), but I'm coping. The Evanston Farmer's Market (one of a bunch of Chicago Area markets) ends this week, though, that's a rough break. Here's a nice article on the market and the website of one of my fave vendors.




My haul for this week (anybody have suggestions for turnips?):