Cauliflower Tagine

We’re harvesting the biggest cauliflowers we’ve ever grown.  Big white, perfectly formed cauliflowers.  My usual fallback recipe is my creamy cauliflower and carrot soup, but with the warm weather and the beauty of this vegetable, I didn’t want to puree the thing beyond recognition.  So, I turned to the internet to find a new cauliflower recipe and actually found two that sounded tasty.  The first one was a roasted cauliflower dish that required ingredients I didn’t have on hand so I turned to the second one, Cauliflower Tagine.  This North African spiced dish is a wonderful combination of cumin, ginger, bay and cinnamon with a little lemon and cilantro mixed in.  It will probably become a new “go to” recipe for cauliflower.

Why I Love Spring

I love Spring!  Those first warm days when you can work outside in the garden without a jacket and everything starts to bloom.  The air is warm and sweet with the smell of lilacs.  You can hear the sound of cicadas and the crows calling to each other.  I love buying seeds and trying new varieties of melons or beans.  It’s the anticipation of things to come.

Black Bean and (vegan) Chorizo Soup

We could eat Mexican food every night of the week.  We love it that much.  When a friend of mine, who lives in Mexico, linked this recipe on her Facebook page, I knew I needed to give it a try.  I wasn’t disappointed!  The original recipe can be found on the website, What’s Cooking, Mexico?

This soup is balanced perfectly, much better than my other black bean soup recipe.  It’s just spicy enough to warm you up on a rainy night but not so hot that it masks the flavor of everything else.  I topped it with some non dairy sour cream, avocado and cilantro, and we both had seconds.

Almond Tart

Almond tarts are also called Bakewell Tarts in England.  They’re a variation of the Bakewell Pudding which was first made by accident in 1820.  The cook at the White Horse Inn in Bakewell misunderstood the landlady’s instructions and a new dessert was born.  There are Italian and Swedish versions of the almond tart but I haven’t been able to determine if the British version came first.