Spring Rolls:

Rice paper (soaked briefly in warm water before each roll)
Slice em' thinner than thin:

Carrots
Red, yellow onions
Green and red peppers
Green onions
Leeks

Cilantro sprigs
Avocado strips
Soba noodles, rice or quinoa (if desired)

Ginger
Garlic

Cut and mix in bowl.

Roll these babies. Use wood cutting board or ceramic plate to roll them onto. Soak rice paper in warm water for roughly 15 seconds (until it does, like I said, turn eerily similar to the texture of skin). Place roughly 1/4 cup contents towards the lower edge (where the mouth would be on a face) of the soaked rice paper (i.e. your grandmother's skin).

Roll, fold sides and continue to roll. Cut in half.

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Dipping sauces:

Tahini with a dash of cinnamon, anise and Agave

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Soy Sauce
1/4 lemon
1/4 orange
Garlic
Ginger

Sauce roughly from Ellen's personal chef. Thank you kindly. http://ellen.warnerbros.com/thoughts/

Roasted Artichoke



For all those readers (my bf and brother), I'm sure you've been antsy in your pants for another post.


We'll start here: I may have fallen in love with a vegetable. She is beautiful. It's been said before, but I'll leave the telling to you all.


Two Artichokes
Two cups vegetable broth
1/2 cup white wine
4 dashes of olive oil
Sea salt, pepper and garlic (sumac and other spices if desired)

Trim tips of artichokes, about an inch from top. Wash. Cut in half. Scoop out the hairy mid-section.

Place in glass cooking dish (deep enough for a small pool of liquid) facing upwards. Pour broth, wine and oil over each artichoke. Salt, pepper and garlic (if that can also become a verb). Add dashes of sumac if desired.

Cover with foil.

Bake at 350. 40-50 minutes.

Roughly based on http://www.lifesambrosia.com/2010/01/baked-artichokes-with-lemon-and-wine-recipe.html

sweet sweet potato muffins (in other words, friends came to visit)

I'm way into sweet potatoes.

Maybe because I can, in fact eat them.

And then some friends came to visit, late at night, past dinnertime. And I had all these potatoes.

And so we landed here:

2 smallish sweet potatoes (peeled, boiled and pureed)
1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
1/4 cup ground flax seed
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/3 c. olive oil
1/2 c. coconut milk (or yogurt)
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/3 c. brown sugar (if using chocolate, cut sugar to 1 c.)
3/4 c. Chocolate Chips or crumbled brown sugar for an alternative topping

Mix dry ingredients. Mix wet separately (oil, coconut milk, vanilla, egg, brown sugar, potato puree).

Combine.

Add chocolate chips (if ya wanna).

Divide between 14-16 greased muffin wells.

350. 24 minutes.

p.s. adapted from http://othersideof50.blogspot.com/2009/07/whole-wheat-sweet-potato-muffins.html

Thank you kindly.