Even someone as omnivorous as I am will have food prejudices.

Two nights ago, I got rid of my last remaining vegetable prejudice that was left over from childhood. (I only had three vegetables in childhood I did not like: peas--especially canned, beets, and brussels sprouts.)

I discovered that brussels sprouts, when properly cooked, meaning, not boiled into a bitter, slimy mess of dead plant tissue, are delicious. Nutty, sweet, and somewhat like a cross between my beloved collard greens and bok choy, they are amazing.

I had them at a local restaurant--the best fine dining place around here--and that means a lot coming from a chef, mind you, who works in another restaurant--where the chef presented them in a salad, steamed, with prosciutto, dates, thinly sliced red onions and tossed in Caesar salad dressing. Amazing.

So, I had to try to cook them at home.

I discovered that they go really well in a vegan stir fry with tofu and carrots. Recipe and pictures here.

My next project is to try them roasted with panch phoron--five whole Indian spices.

I hope these pictures are small enough for everyones page. I hate it when a large picture takes forever to download and then stretches your friends page out to boot. If you want a bigger picture just clickety on the image and that will send you off to enormous-ness-nss!

Chocolate Raspberry Trifle

( How it looks in the bowl; a shout out to Nigella; a vague run down of how it was made )

 Hello all. I'm new to the community and am planning to enroll in culinary school by spring. I guess the only way to phrase my question is: what exactly am I getting myself into? I have never had anyone I could ask about their experiences, so that's what I'm hoping to get here.

Sorry if this is a bothersome post, i'm new to LJ.

Image by Dave Walker

Parsnips are highly underrated.

On New Years' Eve my boyfriend and I went out to dinner at a really well reviewed restaurant. Everything that I had was delicious, but it was the parsnip soup that stuck with me.

I think that my Mom used to make steamed parsnips when I was a kid because the moment that I tasted that soup, the snippy taste of those parsnips took me right back to my old kitchen table.

I looked for some parsnip soup recipes online but it turns out that they're all made with either heavy cream, chicken stock, or both... And those are things that I rarely stock in my kitchen. So I decided to go for some Maple Glazed Parsnips (link to recipe) instead. I added some carrots to the mix because we had some in the fridge. And viola! One of my first (almost - the mustard was from somewhere far far away) <a href=">100 Mile</a> meals, completely by accident! Eating locally is a big trend right now, so I thought that some of you who are living in climates similar to my own might appreciate this recipe. Maybe you'd like to share some of your own?