Baked spinach.

My family was sitting around the dinner table one night in the mid ’90s. I was about eight or nine, still young enough to play with my dollhouse, but old enough to start stressing out about things like our house getting burglarized or burning to the ground. (I was a weird kid.) My sister must have been about six, probably missing a couple of her front teeth and generally being adorable.

Our mom had made zucchini for dinner, and neither of us really enjoyed it. I could handle it, but Katie – ever the typical showman youngest child – could. not. even. We were not rude, spoiled monsters, so we obviously did our best to eat stuff we didn’t like, but at that point in time, neither of us had much success conjuring up any enthusiasm. (Currently, we both dig it. THIS IS GROWING UP, KIDDOS.)

My mom asked us – probably in a sarcastic way that was meant to convey one or both of us was being ridiculous about something – what we thought the worst thing god could ever make us do was. I said something probably apropos of my weird, macabre, overly anxious childhood self, like, “Make you kill the people you love.”

Katie, however, was more…well, Katie about it.

Greek salad couscous.

I know. I know. It’s been like, three weeks since I last posted. I was away for a week, then I was simultaneously busy and lazy for another week, and now… I’m getting back on track.

I believe I’ve mentioned before that at my old job, I was spoiled by our cafeteria. It was staffed by two very sweet women and one very nice dude, who just so happened to have been trained at the Culinary Institute of America (and shared some recipes with me, which was awesome). There were fresh soups and salads every day, with “deli” sandwich specials and hot meal specials, and everything was delicious, all the time.  This iteration of Greek salad was featured pretty often, sometimes with chickpeas and other times with Israeli couscous. I always made room on my plate for a little scoop of it. I finally got around to buying a canister of Israeli couscous a few weeks ago, and made my own version of it. You should make it too, especially if you have an olive thing. I…have an olive thing. I’m not proud of this, but I ate a whole can of pitted green olives this weekend. I keep buying them with recipe-related intentions, and then I just scarf them all down and wonder how I got here.

Bright & crunchy cole slaw

Following my post about the oh-so-good carnitas last week, I had a couple of requests for my cole slaw recipe. I originally didn’t measure out my ingredients, but during my semi-monthly grocery store binge, I decided to pick up the ingredients I needed and made it again… and measured my dressing! Hooray!

Here’s the thing about cole slaw – you either love it or you hate it. And I think a lot of people unfairly hate it because their experience with cole slaw is with something that’s watery and bland, and way too gloppy. Not to mention, “slaw” really isn’t the most appetizing word. Like George Carlin’s unwillingness to eat anything that has a “y” and a “g” in its name (yohhhguurt), I’m sure “slaw” just sounds totally unappetizing to many people out there. But, as Colin so aptly put it when I handed him his plate the other night, “You should call this entry, ‘Hey, people! You know you can eat cole slaw that isn’t terrible?'”