Of Food...

“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating."

―Luciano Pavarotti

I'd been thinking about doing a post on a couple of recipes I've tried out and loved lately, and when this quote came to me in an e-mail this morning, I thought today is the day!

Over the Christmas holidays, we had made these incredible pan-roasted root vegetables as a side dish to braised short ribs - delicious!

Here's the recipe from The Balthazar Cookbook:

1/4 cup olive oil (I used a little less)

3 garlic cloves, crushed, skins removed

1 celery root, peeled and diced small

3 medium carrots, peeled and diced small

4 parsnips, peeled and diced small

3 celery stalks, peeled and diced small, leaves retained and finely chopped

2 sprigs of thyme

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet of a medium flame. Add the crushed garlic cloves and saute for 2 minutes, until the cloves just start to take on color. Add the diced vegetables, including the celery leaves, and thyme and cook over high heat, stirring frequently with a spatula, for 5 minutes.

Lower the flame to medium and continue to cook, still stirring frequently, for another 10 minutes. Add a splash of water midway through the cooking time to provide steam. Just before the end of the cooking time, add butter. The vegetables should be tender and lightly caramelized. Season with the salt and pepper, and stir in parsley.

It is a lot of cutting of veggies, but so worth it. So good! And it can be modified to your heart's content. I had a half a rutabaga in the fridge, so I diced it and added it along with the other veggies.

Then yesterday I made a scrumptious Thai Tofu Vegetable Curry I found on a great blog that is all about daily vegetarian slow cooker recipes. Well worth checking out. You can find the curry recipe by clicking here. It was delicious, a little spicy and perfect comfort food for a cold day!
And last, but not least, a little hello from Winslow - obviously he thought that today was a good day to do some gardening...or maybe he wanted to try a new mud facial mask...

In the next couple of days, I may have another painting to show - this current one is proving a little challenging... I also recently received an award and have been remiss in posting about it. I have to state 10 facts about myself, so I'd better get thinking!

Oh, and thank you for all your great ideas for decorating! I will be looking for some branches to bring in, will do some rearranging of our other decorations and I'll go to a nursery to see about getting some bulbs to force indoors. That makes me think that I could be growing an indoor herb garden as well - I miss having fresh herbs from the garden...

Hope you are all doing great!! Off to visit your blogs now...