Carrot Cabbage Kimchi Salad

I read this article about carrots making you pretty, and then A reminded me of college- an era where I was just learning to feed myself. We made a conscious effort to turn orange one winter and met with limited success. But hey, sun shy persons and Irish readers- carrot tans are better than the real thing.

Peel and grate two large carrots. Chop 1 cup of cabbage. Dress with 2-4 tbs. kimchi. It won't seem like enough dressing, but it's really a nicely balanced little dish. Sarlah noted that pickles taste better when paired with their unfermented kin- I think of it as a vegetal horror movie in my mouth.

I forgot to take a picture of this. You're tough though. You can imagine what it looks like.

Orange Avocado Salsa

I am prone to buying ten pound bags of oranges this time of year. I think it's a primal urge to ward off scurvy.

Cut the ends and peel off of five oranges. Cut into slices, and then bite-sized cubes. Add 1/4 onion, minced and 1 handful cilantro, chopped. (Fair warning: I made this salsa to suck up to a toddler with a love of chips. It's super mild. And maybe a little bit acid for small people.) Add 1 tsp. sugar and 1/4 tsp salt. Just before serving, add 2 avocados, chopped coarsely. Stir.

I suppose you could add more onion, a couple of peppers, and maybe a dash of lime. Taste it first though, because the acidity can be a little intense.

Bad Idea Saturday: Easy Lasagna.

See the photo? That's a neat little slice of our lasagna, carefully scraped out of the pan. I'd say the recipe was a total failure, but we did eat the entire pan. We like ricotta.

If you have a demanding family member in love with homemade ravioli and a desire to make pasta as infrequently as possible, you might be open to short cuts. When epicurious.com pushes wonton wrappers as good substitutes for pasta dough in a couple of recipes, you might try it out. You might then be terribly disappointed in the result- not only do you still have to do the fiddly sealing bits, but the resulting ravioli does not taste like suffering and gluten. Unacceptable.

But... a box of lasagna noodles is like three dollars. One hundred wonton wrappers are like $1.07. If they're a halfway decent substitute for ravioli, I'm sure they're a mediocre substitute for lasagna. Right? Right?

No.

No. That very same lack of chewy gluten that made them poor ravioli shells allows them to become a barely detectable gummy vein between layers of sauce, other sauce, and cheese. They provide no structure whatsoever, so anything fished out of the pan has the appealing texture of... ricotta cheese.

Other than the lack of reliable pasta, it was actually pretty good.