When I started playing with flour back in April, I hinted there were changes in the works at OMG! Yummy. Well, the changes are here and I thought I would celebrate with a giveaway - a signed copy of Mollie Katzen's Get Cooking cookbook!
August is all about transitions – teenagers leaving for college, kids changing grades and schools, daylight disappearing a little sooner each night, lazy days returning to a frantic school pace, and the unplanned eating style of summer morphing into menu planning and time management.
Sometimes, inspiration is just what we need to adjust to change. So to celebrate my blog transformation and an August full of transitions, I offer you some inspiration and motivation in the form of Mollie Katzen's cookbook get cooking. It is the perfect starter cookbook for an apartment-dwelling college student, new college grad, or a pace-addict parent searching for easy, healthy, fun meals to put on the table night-after-night.
In case you don’t already know her, Mollie Katzen is the brilliance behind the The Moosewood Cookbook, considered the harbinger and inspiration for the vegetarian cooking revolution in this country. From her bio: "She has over 6 million books in print, is listed by the New York Times as one of the best-selling cookbook authors of all time. A 2007 inductee into the prestigious James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame, and largely credited with moving healthful vegetarian food from the "fringe" to the center of the American dinner plate, Ms. Katzen has been named by Health Magazine as one of "The Five Women Who Changed the Way We Eat." In addition she is a charter member of the Harvard School of Public Health Nutrition Roundtable and an inaugural honoree of the Natural Health Hall of Fame."
I was lucky enough to hear her speak in February and just loved her friendly, warm style and engaging content. A highlight of the evening for me was when she asked us a series of questions including “What is your first food memory of your childhood” as well as “What is the first time you realized that food grows in the ground and not in the freezer, pantry, or a can?” She had the whole room laughing, reminiscing, and searching through our brains for tasty morsels from our childhood.
Though the book is intended for new cooks, as an experienced cook, I find the ideas just as inspiring. I prepared the greek salad one evening, using up some pickled onions I had in the fridge and enjoying the unusual twist of the sherry vinegar in the dressing. The vinegar change was a suggestion in the “get creative” section found at the end of each recipe. Below is the Greek Salad recipe, shared with Ms. Katzen's permission.
How to enter the giveaway:
Just leave a comment below and tell me what your first fond food memory is from your childhood (or memory flavor). For more entries in the random drawing you can also:
- Subscribe to my blog by email (in Follow box or envelope in header)
- Follow my Facebook page
- Follow me on Twitter on my new handle @omgyummy
- Add me to your circles on Google plus or +1 this post
- Pin this post or follow me on Pinterest
The only requirement for entry into the random drawing is to leave the comment about your first happy food memory of your childhood – you can opt to enter multiple times with the social media choices but that's entirely up to you. If you do, let me know in another comment so I am sure to give you credit for your effort!
The giveaway is open for entry until Sunday night August 12 at midnight. A winner will be drawn at random using random.org.
Good luck, enjoy the rest of summer, and please get cooking!
(A huge thank you to Andrew Wilder of blogtutor.com who managed my blog redesign and move to a self-hosted wordpress.org platform)
Mollie Katzen's 'get cooking' Greek Salad with Oregano-Laced Vinaigrette
Beth LeeIngredients
Salad
- 1 pound salad greens washed and dried or three 5-ounce pkgs (romaine is really nice for a greek salad)
- 12 cherry tomatoes halved
- 1 medium cucumber peeled, seeded, and sliced
- 1 medium bell pepper any color, diced
- 1 medium red onion thinly sliced (I had picked onions and used those)
- 1 cup crumbled feta cheese
- 12 Kalamata olives if not pitted, warn your eaters
- Freshly ground black pepper
Vinaigrette
- 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar I used sherry vinegar suggested in her Creative ideas section and it was lovely
- ¼ teaspoon minced garlic about half small clove
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano double that amount if using fresh
- Heaping ⅛ teaspoon salt
- 5 tablespoons olive oil
Instructions
- To make the dressing, combine the vinegar, garlic, mustard, oregano, and salt in a smallish bowl. Whisk until thoroughly combined, then continue whisking as you drizzle in the olive oil. When all the olive oil is incorporated, set the dressing aside. (Or you can put all the ingredients in a small jar with a tight-fitting lid and just shake it emphatically.)
- Combine the salad greens, tomatoes, cucumber, bell pepper, onion, and ½ cup of the feta in a large bowl, and toss to mix well.
- Just before serving, whisk the dressing - or shake it, if it's in a jar - to recombine, and add about half of it to the salad. Toss to coat, and give it a taste. You might want to add the rest of the dressing right now, or bring it to the table (along with the pepper mill) for people to add more to their own portions. Top with the remaining ½ cup feta, the olives, and a few grinds of black pepper, and serve immediately.
Deanna
My favorite food memory is of walking into my grandparents' house at Christmas and smelling my grandma's butter cookies... she always had them sitting out on the table, ready for us! Green with rainbow sprinkles in about 10 different cookie cutter shapes (I would always go for the heart first and the angel second!). She made them every year (even when she probably shouldn't have been cooking anymore!) because she knew how much we loved them. Despite the fact that it was "just a cookie", they really became part of our Christmas tradition and even though those days have passed, I still associate them with a lot of happy family memories. We have the recipe laying around somewhere, but somehow they never taste the same as Grandma's!
Beth
Be sure to hold on to a copy of that recipe Deanna! And if you will share it with me, you and I will bake them together - deal? I love this memory - thanks for sharing! Bet your Grandma and mine would have been an amazing team in the kitchen!
Mothering From Scratch
{Melinda} One of my sweetest food memories as a little girl was my father baking bread. It was delicious! He even won a blue ribbon at the County Fair for his delicious bread! 🙂
Visiting from SITS Saturday Sharefest!
Beth
What kind of bread did he make? Such a fantastic skill to have and to pass on. Do you bake?
Melanie @Metropolitan Money Pit
My first food memory is when I was in Germany visiting my grandparents when I was three. My grandpa would make me leberknoedl soup and we would sit together and eat it.
Beth
Grandpa and a delicious bowl of soup - what more can a kid ask for? Thanks for sharing.
jamie
I too just recently moved to WP! and it's been great so far except there are more spam comments on WP 😛
sandy corman
Made the Greek Salad last night and it was super delicious. Makes a great one dish meal and is healthy too. What more can you ask?
Beth
So glad you made it and loved it! Thanks for letting me know!
Kristen @ Mind Your Bees and Trees
I LOVE the new look of your blog, Beth! It's so much fun to get a new layout. Have fun playing with it :). It's hard to pick just one first food memory, but one that I remember very fondly from my childhood is making homemade ice cream out at our lake house. We would have lots of company over the summers and we loved to make ice cream with our old-fashioned hand crank machine. The rule was (and still is!) if you want ice cream then you have to take a turn cranking it :).
Beth
Love it - earn your calories is always a great rule of thumb! Thanks for coming by and glad you are back on the blogging scene!