Tags
budget meals, lentils, mejadra, mujaddara, onions, rice, vegetarian recipes
I recognize that early January is a time of year traditionally reserved for repentance and asceticism, but I’ve never been much good at either of those. After many years of making my never-changing Annual New Year’s Resolution (yeah, I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours), this year I didn’t make one at all.
So while better women are perfecting their green smoothie technique or annoying the regulars at the gym, I’ve been getting over my fear of deep frying.
And I’m so glad I did. This dish is spectacular for a few reasons. The flavors are deep and rich and sweet, beautifully spiced but not at all spicy. You probably already have all the ingredients in your cupboard, but I bet it won’t cost you $2 if you have to restock anything for this recipe. And the leftovers just get better and better as the days go by. Continue reading »
One nice, small thing you can do for someone is to peel them a pomegranate. My parents have a pomegranate tree, and my dad has mastered this act of generosity after years of lovingly extracting the sweet seeds for my mom, and us, their children, and now my children. (When he left after a recent visit, my baby had learned to say “I wan’ mo’ pom-a-gran-ate.”) I’ve long relied on his expertise to avoid the task myself, but this week I had good luck scoring the fruit’s leathery exterior—without cutting into the juicy arils—and prying off the outer peel one section at a time. Releasing the seeds is slow, meditative, an act of love. J and I crunched the seeds by the handful, and my big girls happily ate them one at a time, sucking away the fruit and spitting out the tiny seed. What a luxury it is to be together, to eat a pomegranate together.
Sometimes change is hard, like knowing that someday soon I won’t have a flying baby anymore. And sometimes it’s easy, like switching up the latke routine at the tail end of Hanukkah. 
I hope you’re enjoying this month, and whatever light-filled holiday it brings to your family. If you have room for one more cookie in your jar, I recommend 
So did you make the 
Oh, what’s that you say? The soup doesn’t look half bad with those perky green bits on there? Well, those are little kale specks that I sprinkled on for the photo because I had no dill or parsley in my fridge. For you, friends, a splash of color, since I have a feeling that all-brown soups, even if deserving, are not adequately appreciated by the food-blog-reading public. (Oh, I crack myself up. It’s hard to take my perceived obligations as a food blogger seriously sometimes. Most times. I mean, I can’t even get into 
