If you give a Gastro-Junkie a garden...

Then she's going to need some compost.

I've recently started a container garden on my patio. It's a clumsy thing, sloppy seedlings in broken rows, sprouting out of old fruit crates, black plastic buckets, mason jars, rubbermade containers. This is my first year gardening in earnest, and so I know I've already made mistakes. My tomatoes were planted hopelessly late in the season. I know I'm in trouble every time I see more skillfully grown seedlings for sale in the farmers market. They are monstrous, towering over my seedlings at home, making them look downright embryonic. My baby tomato plants will never bear fruit before frost, and yet I nurture them anyway. Mostly because I'm amazed I ever got them to germinate in the first place. Perhaps there is still hope for my summer squash.

Having this strange mixed up garden growing on my porch has done something unexpected for my cooking style of late, but not for the reason you'd think. Not because I've reaped any produce from my strange little vegetable patch. I will need at least another week or two before my lettuce and spinach will be ready for harvest, and who knows how long after that for the rest of it. But when I started my garden, I couldn't help but cringe inwardly every time I threw away a batch of coffee grounds or a broken eggshell. These things would end up in a landfill, I knew, when they could have just as easily been feeding my stunted tomatoes. So I did something I had been wanting to do for years, and started composting.

I want to state right now, for the record, that this could all go terribly wrong. I have what is essentially a rubbermade bin of food garbage and newspaper on my patio. I call it compost, and so I am, by association, a gardener, an environmentally conscious individual. But what if my compost doesn't...well...compost? What will I be then? A lady who saves her food garbage in a storage bin on her porch, stirring it, taking its inventory. Saving it for later. A crazy.

So obviously, it is extremely important that this little experiment yield something other than a plastic bin full of rotting food, and soon. I have found myself keeping track of what I have been tossing into my compost bin with a surprising level of intensity, and discovered that my contribution of leafy green vegetables paled in comparison to, well...coffee grounds. Conclusion? I consume a lot of coffee. And apparently, not nearly enough vegetables. I mean seriously, if my compost is undernourished, what does that say about my own diet? Nothing good.

It is a sad fact that my own nutritional well being, not to mention my love of cooking, is not enough to inspire me to eat more fruits and vegetables. Nope. in order to really do anything about my daily allowance of beta carotene, I've got to be saving my food scraps in a box on my porch. Sad but true. Since I noticed the sad lack of green in my compost bin, I have been concocting ways to produce as much vegetable garbage as possible with my dinner choices. Which, in turn, has lead me to craft much healthier dinners. Thinking the bin might be a little low on nitrogen? get some corn husks in there, tomato tops, basil stems, pepper ribs, jicama peels. Cream sauce? No thanks. I'd never be able to compost the leftovers.

I'm not proud. As a thinking adult, and as a food person, I should really be able to make responsible decisions about my green leafy vegetable to coffee ratio all by myself. But twenty six years of history and my own recent observations have proven otherwise, and so I will take a little inspiration where I can get it. And if a bin of rotting food garbage on my porch is what it takes to inspire me to cook healthy and eat more vegetables, well then so be it. So my advice for all of you self taught foodies who love to cook, but maybe don't love your veggies quite enough?

Start a garden.

Brainstorming Salad

I secretly love salad.

I do. It seems weird. I mean, what's the big deal? Lettuce, dressing, maybe a couple of cucumbers. That's a salad, right?

Well kind of. And no.

A truly great salad is a rare thing, a perfectly balanced combination of flavors, pulled together by just the right dressing, to make something satisfying, delicious, filling.

(Did she say filling?)

We've all had okay salads. Limp greens to accompany your pasta entree, with lame lite Italian dressing and a few sad strips of pink, flaccid tomato. Or iceberg lettuce drenched in bland white goop, masquerading as a Caesar salad. But at least once in our lives, each of us has also had a totally triumphant salad, something that made us want to mop up the leftover dressing with the dinner rolls. Made us want to sit back and undo the top button of our jeans when nobody was looking.

Still don't know what I'm talking about? Try this:

Imagine a pile of fresh, spicy mescalun greens, tossed with a sweet, tart balsamic vinaigrette. Now top it with crisp cubes of Fuji apple, chunky walnuts, red onion, pepper crusted steak tips cooked perfectly medium rare, and funky blue cheese crumbles. Maybe some ripe cherry tomatoes for good measure, why not? Go crazy.

Salivating yet? No? Try this one.

A latin style salad of fresh romaine lettuce with a garlicky cilantro lime dressing, (homemade of course). Marinate a few strips of chicken breast in the dressing, saving the rest for later. Now while the chicken is blackening on the grill, top the lettuce with fresh diced tomato, shredded cheddar cheese, a handful of black beans for some hearty, toothy texture, some fresh sliced jicama, and finish it off with some seasoned tortilla strips for a festive alternative to traditional croutons. Avocado in a salad like this one is never a bad thing either.

The key to a truly mind blowing salad is to think about your salad the way you would think about any other dish. Balancing the flavors and textures and combining them just so is crucial. Sure, you could drop some tomato and cucumber on there and call it a day, but what if you keep the cucumber and drop the tomato? Replace it with say...mandarin oranges? And a handful of water chestnuts. And forget about that bottled Italian dressing you were reaching for a minute ago. What could you do with a couple tablespoons of oil, lime juice, some rice wine vinegar, and a dash or three of soy sauce? Think some peanuts would be good on that too? Of course you do.

No oranges? No water chestnuts? That's okay. Start with the mescalun again, or maybe even some baby spinach, and top it with fresh chopped apples. Have a little cold chicken or turkey left over from last night? What about some creamy brie cheese? Drop them both on there, and if you have some of those craisins hanging out in your cupboard, toss some of those in too. Have any sprouts? Have any celery? Either of those would work great here, along with a dressing you can make from the Dijon mustard sitting on the door of your fridge.

Ooh! Got some strawberries? Good! Slice those up and drop them on a bed of baby arugula. You can fix up a quick vinaigrette with some olive oil, a little balsamic, maybe some fresh squeezed orange juice for a little sweetness. In fact, almost any juice would work for this one, so play all you want. Or honey. You can never go wrong with honey in a salad dressing. Top your salad with slivered almonds, cucumbers and fresh, creamy goat cheese. Now take that lovely little bowl of heaven out to the front porch with a chunk of crusty bread and a glass of sangria, prop your bare tootsies someplace where they can feel the breeze, and enjoy the sunshine.

Rainy Day Treat

I've never been that big a fan of hot chocolate.

The stuff in the packets never did much for me, bringing nothing but sweet, cloying, one note flavor that barely warrants having the word chocolate placed in the same sentence, let alone emblazoned across the packaging. Homemade hot chocolate was always better, but even with the hot chocolate my Mom would make on a snowy day, the appeal always had more to do with nostalgia than flavor.

Then food buddy John turned me on to Mexican hot chocolate over the Winter and changed my whole perception of what hot chocolate could be. Rich, sweet, sure, but also spicy and complicated, this was everything I had ever wanted in a cup of cocoa but had never found. The secret it turns out is in the heat. A pinch of chili powder or cayenne gives this sweet treat a little burn, and wakes up your taste buds just in time to appreciate all that rich, decadent cocoa.

I know Spring has officially sprung, but even the springtime can bring with it its own special brand of wet, clammy cold. What could be better then, than a nice rich cup of hot chocolate, and a little spice to turn on that internal furnace? My recipe makes just the right amount for a single serving, since this is one I like to indulge in while I curl up alone with a book and a blanket, but it can be multiplied depending on the crowd.

Hot Chocolate

1 1/2 cups milk

1 heaping tablespoon cocoa

1 tablespoon sugar

1/8 teaspoon cayenne

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Pinch of salt

Pinch of cinnamon

Place the milk in a small saucepan over medium heat. Sift the cocoa into the milk through a mesh strainer to remove lumps, and whisk in thoroughly. Add sugar, vanilla, and seasonings, and stir constantly until warm. Enjoy with thick fuzzy socks and a good book.