I love mashed potatoes, always have. When I was young I even appreciated potato buds. You know, those dessicated flakes of potato to which you add boiling water and a pat of butter? I even liked those. Guilty. I have always loved their warmth, their smooth consistency– for me, mashed potatoes are the ultimate comfort food.
Well, nowadays my palate has become a wee bit more sophisticated than it was when I was seven. I still love mashed potatoes, but now will eat them mashed with buttermilk, with a sprinkling of chives, with the skins on, or even– mashed with another vegetable. Take celery root for instance, that often ignored vegetable sitting at the market next to the other root vegetables. It’s delicious!
This knobby vegetable is crisp when eaten raw, supple when cooked, and tastes like celery, without all of those pesky strings. [...]

Is everyone gearing up for, hands down my favorite holiday– Thanksgiving? I know that I am. There is pie crust to be made, bread to tear for stuffing, and a rustic pate to be assembled– and that is just on today’s schedule. Tomorrow the real work begins; but I am hard-pressed to call any of it work. Gathering together with loved ones, and cooking a fantastic meal, hardly seems like work to me.
For the past several years, brussels sprouts have always been the green vegetable of choice for the Thanksgiving meal. They are synonymous with holidays for me– as synonymous as a cruciferous vegetable can be!
I recently started blogging at iVillage Food. There, I will have a weekly column about eating seasonally. So what was one of my first entries? You guessed it, brussels sprouts. If you have yet to [...]