Everyone in the house is asleep. Even the dog.

The cat is outside fighting though. I just heard him. It’s 8:33PM.

Phew. I don’t know what to do with the PEACE. I guess I’ll just have a beer & unload the dishwasher. Which is like being at the SPA at this point!

Since we just did potato salad, I decided to post this broccoli slaw recipe I made back in December. Today I was out of the house all day and poor G is sick, sick, sick so I wasn’t able to make a new salad. But I’ve been meaning to post this one anyway since it was:

A. Easy

and

B. A success with the young-uns.

This is a great side dish. I served it with fried rice of all things (which was a weird paring but made sense since I wanted to use up my veg before leaving town). Not that you care about that…

This is really pretty, tasty & both my kids ate copious amounts of it which makes me love it.

Pardon the pictures. Not my best work. Taken at night. With my cell phone.

All ingredients are available at Trader Joe’s. Btw: this will go well with cabbage slaw too but Trader Joe’s happened to have the broccoli slaw ready to go.

Here’s all you need:

INGREDIENTS:
2 heads of broccoli OR 1 bag (undressed) broccoli slaw from Trader Joe’s
1/3 small red onion, finely chopped

Buttermilk Dressing
1/2 cup buttermilk, well-shaken (as usual, I had to MAKE buttermilk!)
1/3 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
3 tablespoons finely chopped shallot (or, you could just use a little extra red onion to simplify it)

DIRECTIONS:
1. Chop broccoli into small pieces (or using food processor.) Mine was pre-cut from Trader Joe’s. I prefer cutting it myself if I have time but I don’t always! Toss broccoli with red onion in a large bowl.

2. Whisk together the dressing ingredients with salt & pepper to taste.

Pour over broccoli. (If you used 2 whole heads, the dressing amount should be right. If you use a bag of pre-cut slaw from Trader Joe’s – use a little at a time. You should have some left over.)

3. Toss to coat & season with salt & pepper to taste.

Yummy additions:
1/2 cup thinly sliced almonds, toasted
1/3 cup dried cranberries
2 stalks chopped celery

Kids liked it and they probably wouldn’t appreciate the “yummy” additions.

These kids eat like wild animals. Or don’t eat at all.

Source: Smitten Kitchen

Garsh! I’m going crazy with the summer recipes but that’s because I wasn’t eating the healthiest last week.

I call this dish “One-armed” because I had use of only one arm whilst making most of this, what seemed a simple dish. What was my other arm doing, you ask? My other arm was both holding and struggling with/battling, and trying to keep safe a very cranky 10 month old with 4 teeth coming in all on the same day.

Hey, wouldn’t that be a fun “Top Chef” challenge?

“You have 30 minutes to make a pasta dish involving chopped vegetables with a squirming 22 lb baby in one arm. You lose if the baby burns or cuts herself!”

I think I’ll suggest it to the folks at Bravo.

Shall we get down to it? I found this recipe on Vegan Yum Yum. Don’t worry if you’re biased against vegan food – this is so yummy (or should I say Yum Yum Yummy?) and simple that everyone will like it.

First, you need these things:

This recipe makes enough for 4 people. The original recipe was for 1 serving so I adjusted the amounts.
INGREDIENTS:
- dry fettucini noodles (1 box)
- 1 head broccoli OR a 12 oz bag florets
- 1 c sun dried tomatoes in oil
- crushed red pepper flakes
- salt to taste
- 1/2 of a lemon
- olive oil

Get your water boiling in a pot for the pasta.

Chop your broccoli florets pretty small. The original recipe says to chop them the size of a quarter but since they aren’t in the shape of a quarter and I am spatially challenged I just cut them “SMALL.”

Slice tomatoes unless yours are already sliced as mine were. (Thanks, Trader Joe’s!) These are oily buggers so I’m glad I didn’t have to mess with them.

Oh, by the way, I barely took any pictures b/c of the one arm thing. That and my battery keeps falling out of the camera.

Throw pasta into boiling water. Should take about 10-12 minutes. Salt the water to your liking.

When pasta has about 6 minutes remaining, heat wok or skillet to medium high heat. Pour in 2 tablespoons olive oil. When oil is heated, add broccoli florets. Stir constantly to coat florets with oil. Add oil if necessary. After about 2 minutes, add tomatoes and crushed red pepper to your liking. Cook another 2 minutes, stirring.

Drain pasta & add pasta to skillet/wok. Sprinkle juice from half a lemon and combine. Taste and add more crushed pepper, fresh ground black pepper or lemon juice as desired!