whole grains & vegetable soup

Yesterday I woke up and my eyeballs hurt. I was also walking around like a zombie. Despite having a good night's sleep, I just couldn't seem to wake up, so doing things like talking to clients and working on design mock-ups took incredible amounts of effort.

I'm fighting a cold bug and I don't want it to win, so for lunch I whipped up this vegetable and whole grains soup. Loaded with dark leafy greens (kale to the rescue?), garlic and anything else I could find from the crisper and pantry, it was the perfect meal. And today I feel better. I don't know if it was the soup, or the copious amounts of water I drank, or even the vitamins that I popped, but for the sake of a happy ending, let's say it was the soup!

As today is Wednesday, you can find this cold-busting soup recipe over at Poppytalk. And if you have any leftovers, you can always eat this as soup. Or you could do what I did this past summer and turned soup leftovers into veggie burgers. Your call.

sautéed pea shoots, asian-style

I live on the outskirts of Chinatown where the markets are filled with all kinds of weird and wonderful things. While I'm not particularly attracted to the lizards on sticks, I will try various greens. Last weekend I headed over to my favorite market and a huge bag of pea shoots caught my attention. It was only $1 so I really had nothing to lose.

While pea shoots are quite common, I've never bought them before and really, had no idea what I should do with them. This was the very same weekend that I attended the Eat! Vancouver festival and interviewed a couple of Food TV celebrity chefs. So in my interview with Anna Olson, I asked her what she would do with the pea shoots. After discovering that these weren't the tender baby shoots, Anna suggested that I sauté them asian-style. So the next day, that's exactly what I did. Unfortunately, I didn't have garlic, so instead I subbed in some shallots along with fresh ginger. It was a worthy compromise. The soy sauce lended the much needed saltiness and the ginger added bite. Add freshly ground pepper if you'd like, but for me, this was pretty tasty as is.


sautéed pea shoots, asian-style
4 c pea shoots
1/2 t olive oil
1 t soy sauce
1/2 t toasted sesame oil
1 t minced ginger
1 shallot, minced

Heat olive oil in a large skillet or wok, adding ginger and shallots. Stir until golden. Add rinsed pea shoots. Once wilted, add in a couple shakes of sesame oil and soy sauce and sauté until fragrant, about 3-4 minutes.