Kale

A proud day: after defending it from caterpillars, cabbage whiteflies and cabbage aphids, I have my first kale harvest from the backyard. This was lunch today.

The week of dill

For some reason, I bought a bunch of dill at the market last week. I'm not sure why. I like dill, but I don't have any in my herb garden, and the only herb I buy with any regularity is cilantro. So here we were, with dill, and I had to figure out what to do with it.

This week we had: baked potatoes with cashew sour cream and dill; a creamy potato, leek and lentil soup with dill; Cabbage with Rice and Currants (and dill) from Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian (this was very good: kind of like the lazy person's dolma); and this New Year Noodle Soup from 101 Cookbooks. This sounds like dill overload, but it wasn't really.

My brother recommended this soup months and months ago, back in the summer when I couldn't even think about soup. It's really wonderful: the soup is spiced quite simply, with cumin, turmeric, black pepper and chile, and yellow split peas give it a nice richness. There's chickpeas and borlotti beans too, and spinach, cilantro and dill, and homemade pasta (I went for fettucini rather than thin noodles). And the toppings really make it special: (tofu) sour cream, caramelized onions, and walnuts.

I love walnuts in soup! They fall to the bottom and surprise you when you find one.

Birthday cake

Technically, it's a birthday blondie with mousse topping.

It's based on the Peanut Butter Mousse Cake from The Voluptuous Vegan, except I used Kittee's recipe (with added peanut butter, and no cashews/chocolate) for the blondie layer.

Since we had a quiet little birthday celebration with just us two, I shrank the recipe down to fit my 5 inch springform pan. (I divided both the blondie recipe and the mousse recipe by 4 -- the blondie recipe made enough for a couple of bonus blondies cooked in a muffin tin.)

This was really nice. The mousse is subtle and airy, and is a nice contrast with the sweet and chewy blondie.