Comfort Food: Mid-Winter Edition

When the winter winds howl and you need at least three layers just to keep from shivering, and even your warmest boots aren’t keeping out the snow, you may find yourself craving a certain cozy comfort. But the recent holiday season with its sweets and rich, creamy dishes may have left you feeling over stuffed and needing a break from your favorite cheesy casseroles and mac and cheese variations.Well, there’s an alternative that offers winter satisfaction.

I don’t know what it is exactly, but I find this dish, which does not look exciting and involves no cheese at all, carries a very special kind of comfort and satisfaction. Like a favorite bathrobe you can snuggle into so you feel warm and homey.

What am I talking about? Rice and lentils.

Echo of Spring: Gold-Green Breakfast Frittata

Something quick to brighten most any morning, including gray Spring weekends: Frittata!

What you’ll need (for one hungry person, or two if you have lots of bread and fruit and other lovely sides):

Sunday Brunch Spiced Up

The kohlrabi was black inside. It was shocking; to slice off the stubby end of the solid little rotund root, expecting sweet whitish flesh, only to see an eclipse of black. For those of you saying, hold up – what’s a kohlrabi? Follow the link and be enlightened. Meanwhile, this bad specimen of the usually crisp and sweet vegetable meant an enforced change to my vague meal plans.

The idea was to slice both some potatoes (basic red ones) and two representative kohlrabi, and prepare them in the traditional way of my childhood (thanks, Oma): boiled potatoes tossed in butter and parsley and kohlrabi simmered in water or chicken broth, finished off with a bit of milk or cream. But now I was one kohlrabi short, and felt a change of plans was needed. I had already been thinking about pan frying both the (parboiled) potatoes and the kohlrabi, and now this seemed more tempting, if I just added an egg to the dish.

And thus I ended up with a dinner that would, in fact, be a perfect brunch dish: