Shared Plates II: Spinach Salad, Roasted Squash, Swiss Chard on Toast and Sauteed Broccoli

For a minute there, while I was living on the east coast, I seemed to forget a bit about the food politics of the northwest. In this little corner of the world, it really does always seem to be about fresh, local, sustainable. I think here, maybe more than any other place in this country, people are adverse to processed food that come in packages or have been grown with the aid of pesticides. Many take it one step further, and if food was grown by anyone outside of your state (or county) it might as well be toxic sludge. It's pretentious, and a lot of the time we end up sticking our foot in our mouth, (there are more than a few restaurants that, while they tout fresh local ingredients seem to throw the fresh-local-sustainable shtick out the window for a scallop from Maine) to the point I sometimes think we should all say "Fresh, sustainable and local, unless it's exotic, sells well, and I can't get it locally" or "Fresh, sustainable and local but make sure my wine is from Italy!" and I will be the first to admit I indulge in that behavior.

Hypocrisy aside, as my favorite comic book heroine says "It ain't all bad." I've cut down eating processed vegan goodies like Gardien products and Daiya shreds and am opting to eat what is readily available in my area on a regular basis, and trust me when I say my taste buds aren't suffering. I make a good deal of what Anthony Bourdain might deem "Peasant food," and, if Tal Ronnen could see my fridge now he would likely ream me out for making food reminiscent of Angelica Kitchen in the '70's and insist I get with the times. But you know what? I like my hippie peasant food, thank you very much, and I intend to keep it. Sometimes, I think we get so fixated on improving or changing something we forget how good vegetables can be in their natural state. This is the sentiment I kept in mind when I had a few good friends over for dinner the other night, and we had a lovely simple dinner of spinach salad, baked maple Delicata squash, sauteed broccoli, chard on toast and kale crisps.

Recipes

Spinach Artichoke Dip

Continuing on with the “here’s some more thanksgiving appetizer recipes I always make” posts, I thought I would share the spinach dip recipe I’ve been using for the last 5 or so years. 2 days of short posts, but I promise a full post tomorrow on what promises to be an awesome dinner I’m whipping up tonight. Stay tuned!

 

Spin dip

Zucchini, Yellow Squash and Spinach Soup

In a continuation of the “look in the fridge and figure out what to do with bits and pieces because I don’t want to go out on this rainy, blustery day” series, I find myself making soup. Again. Actually, I quite like soup, which I guess is a damn good thing, considering it looks like soup is shaping up to be a dietary staple…

At any rate, a good bowl of soup paired with a few slices of good bread (oh Essential Baking Company, I wish you could just come deliver Parisian loafs to my door three times a day), a decent glass of pinot grigio, and a few friends (who don’t mind eating whist sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor because I still don’t have any chairs) pretty much makes for the perfect night. Phew! Check out that run on sentence!

This soup is thick and creamy and bright fucking green! Like, Kermit the frog green. Which makes it really fun to eat. I also thought I’d share a nifty trick this recipe utilizes: to make a “creamy” soup without the cream, just add a potato or two. When you blend the soup, the starch will thicken it, giving it that thick creamy consistency.

Zucchini and Spinach Soup