Growing up my mother cooked dinner for us every night. I can remember many of her ‘go to’ dishes, including her fried rice. Sometimes she would serve it with a side of sliced tomato, seasoned simply with salt. The juicy sweetness of the tomato balanced out the dry, savory taste of the rice. When I saw the heirloom tomatoes below, I knew I didn’t want to lose any of it’s character by cooking it. A simply slice and season would do.

Red Cabbage, Yellow Onions, Lacinato Kale, Heirloom Tomatoes, Arugula, Basil, Scallions, and Chinese Eggplant.

If I felt that way about the Tomatoes, I felt completely oppositely about the Arugula. What would I do with this bitter leaf? I’ve been using a new cookbook lately, inspired by Angelica’s viewing of the documentary “Forks Over Knives”. They published a companion cookbook that hasn’t excited me since Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Appetite for Reduction. This one is simply called, Forks Over Knives The Cookbook.

In the end I found that you could use Arugula in Pesto. I whizzed it all up, along with the Basil to make two cups of Pesto. I used one cup of the pesto on whole wheat pasta with the Green Beans.

Chinese Eggplant and some of the Scallion were cooked into my favorite Chinese dish, “Yu Shang Qie Zi”, a spicy SiChuan dish. It was like reliving a very fond but different memory from the tomato one. A memory of my days in China. I used to come home after work and pop into my local diner and order this for 8 Kuai (1 US Dollar!). It would last me two nights. Then I’d go back and order one of the other three dishes I knew the Chinese names for. Ben liked this dish so much he asked for it again.

I braised the red cabbage with red wine and mustard, adding onion, carrot, celery and green apple. Lovely.

That leaves my Kale. I used it in another Forks Over Knives recipe, “Vegetable White Bean and Hash”. I included, among other things, a sweet potato, white beans. It went great with a poached egg for breakfast.