lettuce soup

I like how lettuce soup sounds like gruel or something. Thin, watery, tasteless broth with wilted leaves of iceberg lettuce floating listlessly about. Served lukewarm to you in a rough hewn stoneware bowl while you hang your head and try to will it down your throat. Gross. I hope you don’t bypass this. It’s nothing like that. Instead, it’s bright and springy and a fun way to use big beautiful heads of lettuce and perhaps whatever kinds of greens you have around.
I’m going to the Grand Canyon the first week in June. Rim to rim trip. It’s going to be stupid and hot and long. Stupid because what the heck was I thinking to agree to hiking 23 miles one day and then doing it all over again (the way back we’re splitting into two days, but still). So hotttttt. And sunnyyyyyy. Ahhhhh. Oh and I think some of the people we’re going with are going to be running some of it. And how am I supposed to not run it if other people are running. I’m very susceptible to fitness peer pressure! We’re also going to be hiking day trips around Utah before the Grand Canyon hike. There’s going to be so much Southwest in my life. Colorado is kinda southwesty. I still find that weird to think about. I don’t identify with the southwest very much. Except kokopellis. I mean, I do have a rather large kokopelli collection. Including a tattoo of one on my ankle. Joking.

microgreens salad with garlic mustard vinaigrette

Every year I get so into spring. Like, so freaking motivated. Maybe even more motivated than I was in January to erase the disgusting damage I did by shoveling handfuls of Christmas cookies in my mouth two times a day (maybe three, I’m sure there were breakfast cookies in there somewhere). But motivated in a different way – motivated in a productive, gorgeous-weather-induced energized kind of way. I suppose spring cleaning is a cultural emblem of the season for a reason. So, there’s a raised bed vegetable garden in the works (despite my decision to forgo it last year) and I have grand visions of growing rows and rows of lovely vegetables. In reality, I’ll probably kill them all. I hate Denver.
Microgreens are so trendy. I’m embarrassed to post about them. I promise I won’t post about them when my garden is full of them. Even if that’s probably as far as my veggies will grow since they’ll soon after wither away for lack of water and blaringly awful sun. Sometimes I like trendy things, though. I wish I could prove that I was into them before they were trendy, but I can’t always. DAMMIT. In any case, I love little microgreens – the little baby plants that are so wonderfully peppery and bite-y. This cute market near my house carries them in big ziplock bags and you can find flowers strewn in them. So perfectly spring. The flowers are both sweet and super spicy. And then putting them in a salad makes you feel like your life will be practically perfect in every way.

herbed top sirloin with sautéed radishes

 So I’ve finally gotten my garden planned for the summer. I had initially wanted to build a raised-bed garden. The soil in Denver is laughably hard. Really, it’s like you have a cement yard. Not being interested in getting a rototiller when I’m just renting my house, I thought a raised bed was the best option. Then, when I was at Home Depot all set to buy the wood, I thought again and realized that I was doing the same thing – investing in the property. And if I decided to deconstruct the raised beds when we moved, then I’d have to replant grass where they were. My landlords aren’t interested in paying me to improve the value of the house and so I’m not going to do it. So, I decided to buy pots. That’s what I used to use back in Boston. I had to leave them all on the patio with my plants still in them when I moved – no room. So sad! I hope the new tenants there enjoyed all of my tomatoes! Though it was pretty late to start, I planted seeds in two egg carton pallets. Part of what I’m planting are a whole bunch of herbs in a goal to have a more complete herb garden. I hate buying herbs from the grocery store. I guess it’s okay for when you need a large amount for pesto or something, but for a recipe like this herbed steak, I don’t want to have to buy them. Having all sorts of herbs at your disposal will also make it easier to make a great last minute dinner.
I’m also growing radishes (my first seedlings to pop up!) and I’m super excited because these sautéed ones are a whole new way of eating them for me and they were super good. I kind of feel like radishes easily get relegated to garnish or filler status. But I’ve been eying lots of fun recipes with radishes in them since spring recipes started coming out this year. Sautéing and roasting are the two options that appealed the most to me, partly because it’s still not warm and summery out and I’m still easing into salad weather.

fennel and zucchini soup

The perfect rainy spring day lunch, starring the sorriest fennel bulb in existence. I had planned on using the bulb for some days but just couldn’t get my act together. Those days included failed blog recipes, meal after meal of leftovers, a sudden burst of food inspiration that ended up in a crabby 10pm dinner, and all without figuring how to work in the fennel bulb I’d bought. I had bought some zucchini at one point to make this soup, but then that aforementioned burst of inspiration came to me and I decided to make a Spanish tortilla with them. The end result was beyond delicious, but it wasn’t exactly a tortilla. There’s a definite difference between a Spanish tortilla and a frittata. The main difference being that a frittata you just bake. A tortilla you have to flip. I used a pan that was a bit too small for the amount of ingredients I used. I didn’t think it would ever set in order to flip it. At that point I just said screw it and chucked it in the oven. I WILL post a tortilla recipe one day. I’ll get it. I guess I don’t mind trying again and again (I do get to eat it, after all), just so long as I don’t start at 8pm. In any case, I needed to make this soup to use my fennel.
This soup is an in between soup – not a heavy winter stew and not a chilled summer vegetable soup. It’s creamy, but light. Barely any seasoning lets the flavors of the vegetables come through and it’s served with lightly sautéed grape tomatoes and the fronds from the fennel bulb. Like I said, my fennel bulb’s future was quickly becoming dismal, and the fronds were getting pretty wilted, but I managed to salvage enough for the garnish. I think this soup would go well with a simple grilled fish. I had had a big breakfast (read, the remainder of the tortilla) and this soup hit the spot for lunch on a grey and rainy day. Rainy days are a fun change from Denver’s almost relentless sun (I’m sure a lot of people would hate me for saying that).

pork chops with cherry rhubarb chutney + mustard greens + herbed roasted sweet potatoes

You probably think I have an obsession with sweet potatoes. I think I might have an obsession with sweet potatoes. I almost didn’t include them in the recipe because I’m getting embarrassed with how often I post them. I swear I don’t eat them every day. But this recipe isn’t about the sweet potatoes. It’s about pork chops and delicious chutney, and mustard greens too. It’s getting to be warm and spring like and rhubarb is one of those quintessential early spring vegetables, along with asparagus and peas. I might have jumped the gun a bit on rhubarb here – the stuff I found at my grocery store didn’t look the best and it was stupid expensive. Still, I got it in my head to use rhubarb because I want it to be spring and $6.99 per pound be damned.


I had a wonderful, lazy Sunday late afternoon making this dinner. I did all my prepping and took my time with making the chutney and took lots of stress-free pictures. That is, until America’s Next Great Restaurant came on. I had tried to time everything so I could watch that stupid show while eating, but it didn’t work. So now you know about my dedication to not only Biggest Loser, but another NBC product placement-laden television show. I like food and I like exercising and I like shows that revolve around them. And I don’t like waiting until the following day and watching it on my computer. I like to watch it on TV. It’s like I’m 65.