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Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks fame

I love sharing brilliant blog posts from all over in the hopes that you will be as inspired as I am by some of the creative, intelligent ideas in food floating around out there.  Some blogs have become staple references for me because their writers just seem to hit the bullseye repeatedly. Today, I'd like to give a shout-out to one of the blogs I've been reading for years, 101 Cookbooks. Food photographer and excellent cook Heidi Swanson blogs from San Francisco about healthy vegetarian meals, often creatively adapted from others' recipes, accompanied by her ethereal, absolutely beautiful photos. I think of her as the Sophia Coppola of food blogs.  She's one of the first places I go when I come home from the store (or inside from the garden) with a piece of produce and no plan for preparing it.  Witness my two latest quandaries, the lacinato kale I brought home and then decided I could not stand one more raw kale salad with pecans and raisins, and the head of cauliflower I always have to dress up in order to get it eaten in my house:

KALE

Kale Rice Bowl It's like a beautiful ramen bowl but with rice, and Middle Eastern sauce and seasonings! This is what Swanson does best, I think: mixes and matches different international traditions with ease.  And you can prepare most of the ingredients ahead of time and just build the thing when you come home starving and read to give in to to the Doritos in the pantry. Note to self: stop buying Doritos.

Kale Market Salad OK, it's a salad again, but this dressing is a real keeper for any kind of salad, and the addition of the farro makes this a worthy meal instead of merely another mouthful of raw, scratchy greens.

CAULIFLOWER

Spicy Cauliflower with Sesame This works well as a side dish, but it's also delicious tossed some some slippery, still-hot udon and an extra splash of rice vinegar for a lovely lunch.

Black Pepper Cauliflower Salad  I could mention here that I am now too old to digest raw cauliflower.  Go ahead and make a horrified face, you Millennials, you'll get there someday, too.  This recipe is the best of both worlds: a vibrantly flavored salad, cooked enough that I am not doubled over in pain all night.  And with that bit of too much information, I bid you adieu for the weekend...