I combined all things crunchy and colorful in this broccoli salad. My hope is that I might be able to convince a few more of you to eat broccoli, not because it's good for you, but because you genuinely like the way it is prepared. I (willingly) eat broccoli three, sometimes four times a week. In this case, tiny green florets, crisp apples, crunchy shallots, candied nuts and slivered red onions are tossed in a barely sweet, creamy almond vinaigrette. Add baked tofu or pan-fried tempeh and you can easily turn this side into a main course. It's a hearty and substantial with lots of play between sweet and savory, crunch and creamy.

You can certainly make the components ahead of time, but don't dress the salad until you are ready to serve it - preserving the various crunches.

I picked up a box of cute, animal shaped cookie cutters at Williams-Sonoma the other day. The box contained one lion, one tiger, one giraffe, an elephant, and a seal with a ball on its nose. And although it took two tries, my second attempt at a dough worked out nicely - a couple of my favorite two-year-old friends told me so. Made from whole wheat pastry flour, a dollop of coconut oil, shredded coconut, ground walnuts, a touch of salt, and as little sugar as I thought I could get away with, the cookies baked up fragrant, golden and crisp.

I should mention that some of the circus animals are better behaved than others. The lion and tiger, with their open shapes, were a breeze to stamp out. The elephant was pretty great too - aside from the occasional missing trunk mishap. On the other side of the spectrum, I had a number of beheaded giraffes.

For those of you who are curious, my first attempt dabbled with olive oil as the fat, and honey as the sweetener - I wanted to explore a non-granulated sweetener in this type of cookie/cracker. They came out dry as Mojave Desert - dry, dry, suck the last drop of moisture from your mouth dry, and not very tasty on top of that. I took a moment to say good-bye to those little lions and tigers, and they spent the rest of the afternoon lounging around the compost bag.

I know some of you are going to ask - I don't see why you couldn't substitute unsalted butter for the coconut oil if you like, it should work out fine, but I haven't tested that variation. I should also mention how important it is to chop the shredded coconut in these cookies into tiny, tiny, flecks - this way it won't look like your animals have "grass" stuck to their feet, and will make stamping out the cookies easier.

I suppose I had what most people would call a stay-cation last week in nearby Marin County. My assignment was simple - take care of your sister's two dogs. Friends find this mildly amusing, because although I generally like dogs, I don't own one, and Heather's dogs aren't exactly petite. I'll just mention that one is a Bernese Mountain Dog and leave it at that. I settled into her house, made sure the dogs had plenty to eat, and used it as home base while she was in the UK. For those of you unfamiliar with Marin, most of it sits just north of the fog-bank that drapes itself over San Francisco each summer. Temperatures peaked in the 90s while I was there, and when I wasn't tossing squeaky toys to my two canine friends, I was exploring some of the nearby sites. This big, slurpy bowl of whisper-thin spinach noodles draped in a spicy curry and herb broth was inspired by a beautiful box of noodles I picked up in Mill Valley.

While walking around Mill Valley, I stumbled into Tyler Florence's new shop - yes, you know him, the guy from the Food Network! He lives in this area. His shop is called Tyler Florence West Coast Kitchen Essentials - it's sort of like Williams-Sonoma but infused with the slightest hint of Anthropologie, and let's say 5% generic country kitchen. There were a couple unexpected details and quirks that I'd love to see more of. For example, stacks of vintage Gourmet magazines you can take to the back of the store and browse while sitting in the cozy library cookbook alcove. You can't buy them though (I tried!). He also stocks adorable, handmade kitchen aprons and textiles by Ambatalia / The Fabric Society. This one came in a kids size, and although I rummaged through the shelves looking for an adult-sized version, it wasn't meant to be. There was a wall of various food products - oils, spices, vanilla and the like. I spotted a box of lovely, light, Cipriani spinach tagliolini and quickly grabbed a box. You see half of it here in today's recipe coupled with a selection of herbs that were congregating in my refrigerator door (again), and a nice jolt of curry paste.

In case you find yourself in that zip-code, and before you make your way to the recipe, here are a few other places worth mentioning. I spent my mornings at Emporio Rulli in Larkspur. There is one guy pulling shots who is particularly on point. If I lived in that area I'd have to ask him his work schedule is. Wayne came over on the ferry one day and we had fantastic Neopolitan-style pizza that night at Pizzeria Picco - and no, we couldn't resist the olive-oil drizzled soft serve with sea salt. And to counterbalance all that - I took a couple tough (but great) classes at The Dailey Method, conveniently located just up the street from Pizzeria Picco.

We ate this the first night back. You could certainly add broccoli for a bit of colorful crunch, and nutritional boost. Cauliflower might be good too.

This recipe is an odd bird of sorts, but it was so well received that I thought I'd share it with you. Heather, my sister was on her way over for lunch. Wanting to avoid a trip to the store, I committed myself to throwing lunch together using whatever I had on hand. Now, I rarely combine tofu with Italian-style sauces, but this (and a few other questionable culinary moves) came into play as I reached for ingredients from both fridge and freezer. Working toward a nutritious, somewhat balanced, in-the-realm-of-healthy main course here's where I ended up. In a sentence - a skillet of quinoa, corn, chopped lacinato kale and pan-toasted tofu tossed with a big dollop of pesto and finished off with a few roasted cherry tomatoes.

I'd make it again, and I might even make it again swapping in paneer cheese for all or part of the tofu. I happened to use quinoa here, but really, you can use just about any grain you have on hand. Wayne brought home a packet of ready-to-eat brown rice from Trader Joe's the other day which would have easily worked in place of the quinoa here. You could remix this a hundred different ways depending on what grains, vegetables, and nut/seeds you have on hand. Maybe I should have titled it A Quinoa Recipe for Heather, but I think I'll make it for her again (hopefully often), so from here on out I'll think of it as Heather's Quinoa.

Safe travels home Heather, miss you. -h

I picked up my mystery box the other night, and it was no joke. So heavy, I suspect it weighed in the thirty pound range. It was overflowing with a rainbow of produce - little gem lettuce, Hungarian spicy peppers, lacinato kale, Danish carrot beets, minicor carrots, tomatoes, sweet peppers, chard and scallions. Hidden beneath the rest of it, at the very bottom, so as not to crush the rest of her leafy neighbors, was a hefty rouge vif d'estampe pumpkin the color of a fiery sunset. Plenty to keep the kitchen lively in the coming week. We started by reaching for the tomatoes - slicing them, dicing them, snacking on them raw. That said, we still had plenty that needed to be used up. I thought of the roasted tomato soup in Super Natural Cooking, fired up the oven, and started slicing. It's quite simple, just a handful of ingredients, the majority of which are sliced and roasted to the point of browning and/or collapse. Puree, season with a kiss of smoked paprika, and enjoy. That's it.

I tweaked the recipe a shade from the original by saving a few of the roasted tomatoes from their fate with the hand-blender, which added a bit of rustic texture to each bowl. I like this soup heated, but you can serve it hot, cold - whatever the weather calls for. And you can do it a day or two in advance if need be, it keeps well.

For those of you who missed it, I also wrote in more depth about Mystery Thursdays here.