This weekend I finally made it to our farmer’s market. I brought home spinach, tomatoes, red onions, fresh garlic, boston lettuce and asparagus. After entertaining the boys with a movie, pop-corn and a root beer float we tucked them into bed and lit the grill. I’ll leave you with the red onion recipe by Tyler Florence. They were so good and so easy.

• 3 red onions, peeled, halved lengthwise
• 1 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/3 cup honey
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 stick unsalted butter
• 1/4 bunch fresh thyme

We returned from California on Saturday after 3 extra hours in the airport, 6 more hours on a delayed plane and so much bad food I lost count. As nice as it was to be home, it was so hard to leave. Several of our family members live in the Los Angeles area and I miss them dearly. Today my heart hurts knowing we’re back on the other side of the country, with out them. Luckily we return over Memorial Day weekend.

Now to get myself back on track after a week of eating and drinking our way along the coast, I’m doing a mini cleanse. Don’t worry, it’s nothing too drastic. Just clean living for a week or so partnered with my normal exercise routine. I will leave you with a beet, avocado and quinoa salad my father’s wife Nancy introduced me to. She is a wonderful cook so there was no shortage of good food on our trip. I whipped this up last night to kick things off and eat over the next couple days. Enjoy.

Ingredients for the salad:

4 beets, roasted, peeled and cut into wedges

1 avocado

about 1/2 cup of sweet onion, cut into small pieces. I used red because that’s what I had on hand.

1 cup of cooked red quinoa

Ingredients for the dressing:

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 teaspoon of honey

1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup of olive oil

salt and pepper

Whisk together the dressing, pour over salad and mix. If you plan to eat this over a few days, omit the avocado until you are ready to eat. This will avoid it turning brown.

I went to Trader Joe’s last week and spotted this pretty purple box of couscous. I picked it up and to my surprise found a very simple and delicious recipe on the back. A few key ingredients pack in great flavor. Pine nuts, parsley, shallots and raisins (I left those out) are all it took to create a light couscous salad. We ate it all week. I highly recommend.

I make lentil salad pretty often around here. I love it for lunch or dinner and find it very easy to make. It also packs in quite a bit of protein. You can basically boil the lentils with some garlic and salt, then add anything you like to spice it up a bit. Leeks, carrots, shallots all taste nice. Drizzle with a vinaigrette or in this case, some butter, dijon mustard and lemon juice, and you’ve got yourself leftovers for the week. The recipe can be found here.

Please note: I substituted the lemon for champagne vinegar because that’s what I had on hand.

To celebrate I made the boys heart-shaped french toast this morning. Strawberries would have been a more appropriate topping but bananas were all we had on hand. They didn’t seem to mind.

My recipe is an oldie but goodie, from the Silver Palate Cookbook. I am always looking for ways to add fruits and vegetables to the boys’ diets. Banana bread is one of those ways. I love it because it’s great for breakfast and packs well in a school lunch.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

And for the recipe:

8 T unsalted butter, room temp
3/4 c granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 c unbleached all-purpose flour sifted
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 c whole wheat flour
3 large ripe bananas, mashed (1 1/4 cups – 1 1/2 cups)
1 t vanilla extract
1/2 c walnuts, coarsely chopped (I used chocolate chips)

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan.
2. Mix flour, soda, salt together.
3. Mash bananas with a fork, add vanilla to the banana mixture.
4. Cream butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time and beat.
5. Alternately add dry and wet ingredients to butter mixture, beginning and ending with the dry (dry-wet-dry-wet-dry)
6. Pour into pan. Bake 50-60 min, or until cake tester comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 min, then on rack.

With work slowing down a little bit and all these snow filled days I have found my way back to my kitchen. We have always cooked alot in our house but it’s been nice to finally have some time to revamp my weekly go-to recipes, try some new comfort food dishes and even bake a bit.

Up until now I have kept my recipes in a binder, as I often tear out things from magazines. I have been putting them in plastic sleeves or in the pocket of the binder and it has turned into a big ol’ mess. I can never find anything as nothing is categorized (god forbid, right). SO, I did a search online for recipe storage and found this lovely stainless steel box from organizeit.com (which is my heaven). I love it because it will be very easy to take out a recipe on a weeknight, pick up the necessary items at the store and cook away. I know, it will take time to insert things or write them on notecards but there is something so nice about having hard copies of all your recipes in one place. Of course eventually they will get stained and worn but that’s what I love. The box reminds me of my grandmother’s recipe box that included all of her handwritten baking recipes. Over time I hope over to create a little treasure box of our favorite family recipes and one day will hand it down to the boys.

Another big motivation to getting my recipes organized is Conner’s recent willingness to try new things for dinner. I really wanted to have easy, healthy and creative dinner ideas (that he likes, were working on Ty, he is still very picky) very accessible. I plan to organize things into a few key categories that are important to us:

Easy Weeknight Meals

Snacks

Baked Goods

Vegetarian

Soups

Comfort Food

On the Grill/Summer Meals

Pasta

Seafood

In honor of my new cooking excitement I have created a new category here on the blog appropriately called, “recipe box.” I’ll share the recipes I love and practice some food photography while I’m at it. Let’s kick things off with some granola, a recipe I found from This Homemade Life. The boys and I made this yesterday and it’s delish. I substituted the wheat germ for flax seed because that’s what I had on hand. Enjoy!

One of my favorite things to cook during the winter is soup. I love that making soup for dinner leaves leftovers for my lunch. I also love that everything goes into one pot leaving very little to clean up. I’ve made curried lentil quite a bit this season and last Friday (on yet another snow day) I made Katie Lee’s carrot and ginger soup. I own her first cookbook, The Comfort Table which despite the dull photography, is pretty good. I also make her chili pretty often. Next soup on my list is tortilla. What’s on your list?

It’s Friday! Here’s a little something to keep you healthy over the weekend – pea dip with parmesan by Mark Bittman. I made it yesterday and it’s a very nice alternative to the usual fattening dips. My neighbor Sloane introduced me to it and I’m glad she did. Serve with pita chips and enjoy!