It’s that time of year again – the farmer’s markets are finally opening. Here’s another roundup of accessories to keep you looking good as you browse the stalls. Oh and in case you didn’t know - it’s all about the radish this year. You heard it here first.

• These earrings from StrawberryLatte are delicious, and only $6. Beware of ear nibblers.

• Stripes, radish - who needs diamonds? This ring by LaNinja is $15.

• Spending money was never so tasty. Garden Vegetable Wallet by moonandsundries, $28.

• Wear the radish. Don’t let the radish wear you. T-shirt by FortCloudy, $25.

Just a little site update. My Vegetable Blog now has a new home at myvegblog.com. If you previously used the joannalouise.com URL, you’ve no doubt noticed that it hasn’t worked for a while now.

If you use myvegetableblog.wordpress.com, that will still work (but the new one is so much shorter and easier!), and if you subscribe to the feed, that will remain the same for now.

Thanks for reading!

I’m usually a leftovers-for-lunch type of girl, but sometimes a lovely salad is a nice change of pace. This one is super easy to assemble and oh-so tasty. The walnut-citrus combination is one of my new favorites, and I’ve doubled up on it here with toasted walnuts and sliced kumquats, and a dressing of walnut oil and Trader Joe’s Orange Muscat Champagne Vinegar.

Here’s the recipe (if you can even call it a recipe):

• 1 cup cooked quinoa (It takes about 20-30 minutes to cook, so throw it on the stove while you’re getting ready in the morning).
• 2 cups baby spinach
• 4-5 kumquats, halved and sliced
• 2 tablespoons toasted walnuts
• 1-2 tablespoons crumbed goat cheese
• 1-2 tablespoons walnut oil
• 1 tablespoon Trader Joe’s Orange Muscat Champagne Vinegar (or champagne or white wine vinegar and a splash of orange juice)
• salt and pepper

Assemble salad ingredients. Combine dressing ingredients. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Pack away for lunch or eat immediately.

Enjoy.

Spring vegetable and grain salads are popping up all over the place:

Spinach and Orzo Salad from Simply Recipes

Meyer Lemon Grain Salad with Asparagus, Almonds and Goat Cheese from The Kitchn

Spring Tabbouleh from 101 Cookbooks

Are you drooling yet?

You know, the Midwest is a really frustrating place to live this time of year, particularly if you are prone to reading lots of food blogs, many of which are authored from places like San Francisco where the abundance of fresh vegetables never seems to end. It seems that even New York has year-round farmers markets and is already enjoying the bounties of spring like the mysterious fiddlehead fern. If these exist in this region, I haven’t found them yet.

Here in Chicago, farmers market openings are still at least a month away. But I just had to join the spring grain salad party, markets or no markets. I settled for some spring veggies from the supermarket, and while the salad turned out fine, I think I understood the slow food philosophy more than ever before. I’ve enjoyed local, farmers market vegetables for a while, but I don’t think I ever truly appreciated the joy of a vegetable tasting exactly the way it should. I assumed this was true, but I never really thought about it until I bit into those supermarket zucchinis from who-knows-where and thought, man, these do not taste much like zucchini, or anything really.

The asparagus, however, was pretty asparagusy.

Here’s the recipe:

• 2 cups cracked wheat (or bulgur), rinsed well
• 1 bunch of asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 medium zucchini, quartered and sliced
• 1 big handful of fresh spinach, chopped
• 1/2 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped
• 1 shallot, minced
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice (or more, to taste)
• 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon walnut oil
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• salt and pepper

Heat cracked wheat in pot with 2 tablespoons of olive oil for about 2 minutes. Add 4 cups of water and salt, bring to boil over high heat. Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer for 20-25 minutes, until fluffy.

Meanwhile, prepare veggies. When cracked wheat has about 5 minutes left to cook, add the asparagus and zucchini to the pot and recover. They will steam slightly as the wheat finishes cooking.

For the dressing, combine the shallots, lemon juice, vinegar, walnut oil, remaining olive oil and salt and pepper.

Pour wheat and vegetables into a large bowl. Mix in spinach, walnuts and dressing. Serve warm.

Top with crumbled goat cheese if you’re feeling cheesy, or goaty.

Enjoy.

This was my second Rancho Gordo cooking experience, and I have to say, I’m hooked. The beans are amazingly flavorful. For a pot of Runner Cannellini’s, I followed the company’s suggestion to cook with a simple miropoix, and other step’s in their bean primer.

For a little something extra, I topped these buttery gems with some homemade garlic bread crumbs. Yum, yum.

My copy of Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Cooking arrived last week and while I waited much too long to finally order it, I didn’t waste any time trying it out. I made a double batch of the lentil and goat cheese crostini to split between two Easter celebrations yesterday.

It was pretty well received, and I even introduced a couple people to their first lentils. I used lentils du Puy instead of beluga lentils, so they weren’t quite as dark and glisteny, but they tasted just fine. I didn’t have any vegetable stock on hand, so I threw a bay leaf, garlic glove and celery top into the water while the lentils cooked, for some flavor. Next time I’ll tie them up in some cheesecloth so I won’t have to fish them out.

But I will definitely be making this recipe again. So easy and delicious.

Here’s the recipe.

Last year for St. Patrick’s Day, I made a big cheesy, meaty feast. This year, I had plans to make several Irish-inspired dishes, but then I got busy, and then there were Bravo reality shows on the DVR that needed watching and, well, you can see where this is going.

I did however manage to make a somewhat sorry Irish cheese fondue.

I had two varieties of high-quality Irish cheese – one an Irish cheddar and the other an aged Dubliner cheese. Both were delicious on their own. There was something slightly fruity about both of them, and I wish I would have just nibbled on them with some bread instead of turning them into this fondue.

For one thing, my fondue accompaniments were a little sad – a baguette and some frozen green beans, used primarily for their greenness and because I had no other more appropriate fondue vegetables – cauliflower, broccoli, red potatoes, asparagus. Any of those probably would have been better.

I made one major alteration to the fondue recipe. I didn’t have any frozen apple juice concentrate and couldn’t find it at the corner store, so I used some apple juice that I reduced on the stove instead. That probably changed the end result, which was pretty runny and slightly coagulated. The recipe called for a stout beer, such as Guiness, which seemed to overpower the cheese flavor entirely. The cheese itself didn’t melt very well, perhaps because I used a combination instead of strictly cheddar.

It was OK with the bread, but it didn’t stick to the beans at all. Perhaps I should have added some pureed white beans for that creamy consistency.

My shoulders and feet are sore and I’m nursing a junk food hangover – trade show season has begun. I spent yesterday at the International Home and Housewares Show at McCormick Place in Chicago. (Sidenote: What is up with the miserable food selection there?)

I feel like I only saw a fraction of the products on display (the show is massive), but here are a few of my favorites:

The Smood masher from Australia’s Dreamfarm is designed to trap potatoes or other mashables in its collapsible circular spring and smooth them quickly and easily. I was surprised by how springy it actually is. It’s available for order on Dreamfarm’s site ($19.95), or at Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea locations in Chicago.

These may just be loofahs, but there’s a big sustainable effort behind Loofah-Art’s products. Made from sustainable materials grown by self-employed farmers, the loofahs are 100 percent biodegradable and, get this, loofah is actually a vegetable itself. Plus, the vegetable designs are pretty adorable. Available at EcoBags ($2.99).

The Reisenthel Carry Bag was a hot product introduced at last year’s show and, according to one of their reps, one of the most copied. I really wanted one last summer, as a perfect farmer’s market carryall, and with the new patterns introduced at this year’s show, I don’t know how I’ll resist. Available at Reusable Bags ($39.95).

OK, so this one is a bit of an indulgence. I generally try to avoid super-specific, not-so-necessary gadgets mostly because storage space in my kitchen is pretty limited. But, here’s the thing, I *hate* chopping garlic. I always manage to get garlic all over my hands, and I haven’t had better luck with garlic presses, which are such a pain to clean. The Garlic Twist only has two molded plastic pieces with no hard-to-clean crevices, and I like that it allows for some variation. Place peeled garlic inside and twist – less for chunkier pieces and more for a finer mince. It works with ginger, too. Available at William Glen ( $14.98 ) and at The Chopping Block in Chicago.

I was all about mushrooms this past weekend. On Friday, I finally made it to Erba, a modern little Italian restaurant that’s been in the neighborhood for a while now. I’ve been meaning to try it since it opened, and thanks to a cool gift certificate deal, I finally did.

I started with a salad of baby beets roasted in sea salt with hazelnut-crusted goat cheese, greens and hazelnut oil vinaigrette. Yum, yum. For my entree, I had a mushroom risotto with red wine syrup, which was also quite good.

I stayed in and cooked for the rest of the weekend, but I definitely had mushrooms on the brain. I stocked up on a big bunch of creminis, putting some on homemade pizza and cooking some up with a batch of Rancho Gordo Scarlett Runner beans. It was my first taste of Rancho Gordo beans, so I prepared them simply, as recommended, with the mushrooms, lots of roasted garlic and a few dashes of hot sauce. I have to say, they totally live up to all the hype – so flavorful.

Last night, before settling in to say goodbye to The Wire, I made some risotto of my own. It’s a little-less-rich, vegan version of a classic dish. This is pretty much how I’m eating these days – I think I’m done with meat, but eating a vegan diet all the time just isn’t for me. I have, however, cut a lot of dairy out of my diet and I feel healthier for it. When I cook at home, I usually chose not to use dairy. It’s become a bit of a treat that I have a couple of times a week, usually when I eat out or I’m cooking a special meal. I’ve decided that a life with no cheese whatsoever, for me, is simply not worth living.

This risotto, however, doesn’t suffer at all from the lack of cheese, in my opinion. Here’s the recipe:

• 1 pound crimini mushrooms
• 2 shallots, minced
• 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
• 1 teaspoon dried sage, crumbled
• 4 Tablespoons Earth Balance margarine (or butter)
• 2 cubs Arborio rice
• 1 1/2 cups dry red wine
• 5 cups vegetable stock
• handful of basil or parsley
• salt and pepper

Quarter 2/3 of mushrooms and set aside. Finely chop remaining mushrooms.

Heat 2 tablespoons of margarine and add quartered mushrooms, salt and pepper. Cook until mushrooms are browned and somewhat softened. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a saucepan, bring vegetable stock to low simmer.

Meanwhile, heat 2 tablespoons of margarine in a heavy pot. Add shallots, finely chopped mushrooms, rosemary, sage, salt and pepper. Cook until shallots and mushrooms soften, about 5 minutes. Stir in rice and cook for 1 minute. Add 1 cup of wine and cook until absorbed. Repeat with remaining 1/2 cup of wine. Add 1 cup of stock and cook until absorbed. Repeat with remaining stock, 1/2 cup at a time, until rice is just slightly al dente. (You may not use all the stock.)

When the risotto is nearly finished, reheat the quartered mushrooms. Serve on top of risotto and garnish with basil or parsley.

Enjoy.

*Note: If you have some dried porcinis, that would be a great addition to this dish, along with the water used to rehydrate them in place of some of the stock.

Today is the one-year anniversary of my little vegetable blog. I started it on a whim, and it’s been a lot of fun to see where it takes me. So far, it’s pushed me to try a lot of new things and meet some really cool new people, both online and in person.

It’s also helped me to develop my own cooking style and thoughts about food, both of which continue to evolve. As the site enters its second year, I hope to get back to a more regular posting schedule. Looking through the posts I’ve done over the past year, it’s obvious that I’m most inspired when summer produce and farmers markets are in full swing, and more inclined to photograph my food when it’s still light out after I’ve cooked dinner. But there’s food to be cooked and eaten year-round, so I hope to document mine more frequently.

In celebration of this small milestone, I offer a recipe that I think embodies what I strive for with the site and my cooking - taking ideas from lots of places and creating a recipe that’s simple, healthy and hopefully tasty.

This pesto pasta was inspired by a sandwich at a lunch spot near my office, made from avocado, basil, pine nuts and Parmesan cheese. The first time I ate it, I was really surprised at how well the avocado complimented the other ingredients, and vice versa.

When I decided to use those flavors in a pasta dish, I thought of this Spaghetti with Avocado & Cashew Pesto from The Passionate Cook, and this Pea and Avocado Puree from Joanna’s Food. The result, I think, is perfect for those days when I’m craving something springy as winter drags on.

Here’s the recipe:

• 1/2 pound brown rice pasta (or any pasta)
• 1 clove garlic, roughly chopped
• 1 cup frozen peas, thawed
• 2 small cubes of frozen basil, or a handful of fresh
• 1 avocado
• handful of baby spinach
• squeeze of lemon juice
• 1-2 tablespoons olive oil
• salt
• 2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts

Cook pasta according to package directions. Meanwhile, combine garlic, peas, basil, avocado and spinach in food processor. Add lemon juice and salt to taste. Blend, streaming in olive oil until mixture comes together. Drain pasta and toss with pesto. Top with toasted pine nuts and, if you’d like, some shaved Parmesan. Serves two.

Enjoy.