The Perfect Raw Kale Salad
The key to the perfect raw kale salad is to make sure you soften it first. Kale has become the popular leaf lately, but it can be difficult to eat, bitter tasting and even more difficult to digest. It doesn’t have to be…. Soften raw kale in less than 15 minutes with out even touching it. When I was living in Paris, I longed for dark leafy greens more than you can even imagine. Parisians have spinach, but kale and collards ...
Kale Salads and Not Blogging
As anyone involved with social media can attest, daily experiences aren’t just daily experiences anymore. They’re experiences to be tweeted, blogged or pinned immediately, which lends new meaning to the notion of living in the moment. I haven’t quite decided how I feel about all this as I participate in this world, and often find myself saying, “Shoot, I should have tweeted that,” or having my dining companion say to me, “Shouldn’t you be blogging about this?” And then feeling ...
Italian cooking lessons via Skype
If you’re lucky enough to have a Southern-Italian friend with a mother who can cook, I’d advise extracting as much culinary wisdom as you possibly can from your friend’s mother. My dear friend Gabriella, originally from Bari, Italy, happens to have that mother. Her mama speaks very little English, and though my Italian cooking lessons with her are sporadic, I’ve learned priceless things, mostly pertaining to seasonal vegetables. Gaby’s mother and I have never actually spoken. Gaby translates her mother’s ...
Grilled cheese, sort of.
I admit it. I am an enabler. Entertaining gives me enormous joy, and cooking for large groups of loved ones gives me immense pleasure. Or even small groups, or even for just one. Cooking is a moving meditation for me – a temporal art I can loose myself in. It’s much the same feeling I get from my yoga practice. Recipe re-creation takes the thrill up to an entirely new level. It’s the challenge of taking one’s favorite recipe and ...
Soul-searching and Broccoli Soup
There is a trend surfacing among my friends and loved ones. They all say they’re having a midlife crisis, but we’re not that old! I think it’s more a transitional period – a soul-searching phase. They’re quitting high-paying jobs, thinking about sabbaticals or parting from long-term relationships. This is very peculiar for me since, for the past decade, I’ve been the one doing most of these things. I now find myself back in a stable place and armed with suitcases ...
How to Make a Green Smoothie
I have happy places and happy things. Happy places are my shortlist of go-to spots that perk me up when a little perk is needed. Whole Foods, the Soho House, yoga class with my teacher Lara Brunn, an impressive farmers market, the sea, my mother’s sofa are a few. Happy things are the same, just in “stuff” form: my Vespa, a green smoothie, avocados with sea salt, artichokes in any form,. When the two converge, well, that’s just a little slice ...
A Peculiar Pasta
I find pasta very comforting – it’s comfort food. But I don’t eat it very often, as I haven’t found a gluten free pasta I really like. The quinoa varieties are satisfying, but I find they must be cooked perfectly or the noodles get messy. I’d much rather pour my sauce over a big bowl of steamed broccoli rabe, or over a crisp buckwheat-and-cornmeal-crust pizza covered with roasted vegetables. That is, until recently, since I rediscovered Kelp noodles. I shamefully ...
Another Type of Risotto
I have been asked a lot lately what program I recommend to my clients. I can’t really answer that, since all programs are custom creations. However, there are a few things that hold true for all of the cleanses, all of the programs and all of the recipes. I am a firm believer in a veggie-centric regime, gluten free grains and unrefined sugar. Gluten free does not mean “no carbs.” In fact, carbohydrates are necessary and very good for us. ...
