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Healthy Eating

Salted Watermelon Salad with Cayenne and Mint

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This was stolen directly from my neighbor Leah, who hosted a fabulous Memorial Day party for a bunch of people on our street this year.  

Spicy watermelon.  I mean.  

It’s ridiculously simple, which honestly is how I think all watermelon dishes should be.  Throw some feta on there every once in awhile, sure, but watermelon is so wonderful on its own, especially this time of year when it’s actually in season, but mainly a few teeny flavors over the most perfect summer fruit is all I need.  


I know some people are iffy about salt on fruit, and I hear you.  Sometimes it doesn’t work.  Here, though, it definitely does.  The super sweet melon with just a teeny bit of salt really bring together the spice of the cayenne and the freshness of the mint, and lime zest over the whole thing just feels right.  It’s one of those perfect 5-minute raw summer dishes that feel fancy, take zero effort, and taste amazing.  

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Roasted Eggplant with Raita and Mint

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Oh hey seasonal eating that is healthy and feels decadent all at once.  

We can thank the internet for this one.  I don’t have a great story here except that I read an article with a recipe similar to this and couldn’t get it out of my mind. This happens a lot.  My favorite Persian restaurant in Greenville has an appetizer that involved eggplant and yogurt drizzled over top, so the combination wasn’t terribly foreign to me.  

This, however, was roasted chunks of eggplant over a raita/tzatziki combination with fresh tomatoes and something green on top for good measure.  The original recipe had crispy kale, there was a version with microgreens, and I went with just fresh mint because 1. it grows on my porch and 2. eggplant and yogurt with mint is a really wonderful flavor combination.  


The story here is that I made this last week as Jay and Beck were about to head out for an outing.  We hadn’t had lunch and it was getting late so I was like “here, have this before you leave!” Jay had a few bites and then left, and I ate the entire thing by myself.  Rest assured, I was plenty full when it was gone (and omg garlicky), but this is a dish that doesn’t weigh you down even when you fill up on it, if that makes sense.  The eggplant makes up the bulk of the dish, and if you use a fork instead of ONLY naan for shoveling into your mouth this becomes a pretty nicely balanced dish.  

See also: fresh mint can’t stop with it. 

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Raw Corn and Tomato Salad

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Raw and vegan.  Because vegan feels easier in the summer, to me at least.  

Hey, hi!  Hope your weekend was great.  We did super low key with farmer’s market, lots of walking, eating, photographing food, golf, and wine.  It was glorious and prepped me for 3 full weekends of busy we have in front of us.  Fun, but still busy.  

Anyway!


Whether or not you’re a practicing vegan, I hope you’re someone who enjoys summer produce as much as I do.  I have to admit that I find eating seasonally somewhat boring in the months where lettuce and beets are the only things really locally available, when it’s so tempting to go to the store and buy anything you want to eat, even if it doesn’t taste that great.  In the summer I don’t have that problem at all because there are so many amazing fruits and veggies coming straight of the ground all around us.  

There is a specific beauty to fresh local corn: It’s so good, so much different than the nonsense you can get year round (where is that coming from?), and can end up being sugary sweet, crunchy, and creamy all at once without doing anything to it but cutting it off the cob.  I love corn in lots of cooked ways too, but especially enjoy it raw on cobs that are so flavorful and perfect right now.  …

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Southern Stewed Cabbage

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Oh hey!  There are a few teeny tidbits you should know.  First, last night I dreamed that my incredibly tiny sister Emily had decided to lose some weight because she met some PhD (?) students who were very thin but younger than her and she decided that she needed to lose weight.  We were in some sort of a convenience store and I went full WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU and she got really mad and yelled to our grandparents (?) that I am so mean to her.  Then she proceeded to say “it’s just the best because once I lose this weight I can set a new goal and lose more!” and then in this convenience store with our grandparents I made her repeat the word anorexia to me the same way I do with Beck when we are working on new words.  I’m going to have to call Emily and work….something…out. 

All that to say.  My sister married a guy named Ben who has a similar essence to Jay.  Buzzed head, hipster glasses, casual style.  And when Beck was learning to talk and figuring out that more people than just Mama and Daddy existed she referred to Ben as DAH!!! in pictures.  Because they look the same but not. 

And so now that you know that, you can know that when I did some kind of “what do we eat with cabbage?” query online a few weeks ago when I had 3 heads inexplicably in my fridge, Emily chimed in with BEN LOVES CABBAGE, he chimed in with a link to a recipe similar to this, and that is the story of why we are having a very simple but flavorful and delicious cabbage side dish today.  


It’s a pretty classic southern thing, and everyone has their own version of it, but the short and sweet is that you chop up cabbage, cook it down in some flavorful liquid, and when it’s super tender and flavorful douse it with salt and pepper.  Some people steam theirs for health purposes, some people add spices or herbs, use different kinds of cabbage, tons of options.  I think anything cooked with onion, butter, salt, and pepper is a winner, so I went that route. 

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