that's my jam (whiskey/jam/lemon/ginger ale)

well i wouldn't be a very good part-irish person if i didn't have a drink to make for good old saint patrick's day, to be sure. but i'm not super-into green drinks in general so i'm not going to make some kind of unholy wheatgrass-vodka thing or an equally unholy green beer. i guess you could make this green if you use mint jelly, but it would be disgusting so i can't recommend it.

there are a lot of other colors in ireland besides green, anyway. stone, for instance. and sheep-color. but green does predominate.

irregardless, this is a drink that you can probably make from the things you have sitting around already (aka The Best Kind of Drink). all it takes is roughly equal amounts lemon juice and jam or jelly, mixed vigorously with a fork (or, if you fancy, a whisk). i was lucky to have some very tasty blackcurrant jelly that my wonderful coworker made, but you can use whatever you have around. maybe not grape. but maybe! necessity and invention and all that... then add an appropriately irish amount of whiskey (note the "e") and fill 'er up with ginger ale.

goes down a treat! sláinte!

*ingredients*

1 tablespoon jelly or jam (your choice - i think marmalade would be great, as would raspberry or strawberry)

1 tablespoon (+ or -) lemon juice

an amount of whiskey

ginger ale

listening to: it probably should be the pogues. let's go with that.

(secretly i was listening to clearlake, who are english, but it made me feel too guilty)

two quick/easy/healthy lunches

whether you bring your lunch to work or eat lunch at home or school, making it is one of those hassle-y things that you either sigh and do or sigh and don't do and then you end up buying a sub-par sandwich from the little shop on the ground floor of your office building.

wait, i guess that's only related to the bringing-your-lunch-to-work thing. and it's really only related to my work, because probably not everyone is lucky enough to work in office buildings containing shops with mediocre sandwiches on the ground floor.

anyway, i've never been that into making lunches. but i try to do it, because on tuesdays and thursdays i have to be Out and About for like 13 hours so if i don't make one i get into the whole sandwich shop malarkey and am mad at myself later.

two lunches that have been treating me right lately are a beans/kale/tomato melange and a vaguely asian chicken and broccoli thing. both are super quick and quite tasty and they will power you through any number of meetings, memos, or research rabbit-holes you find yourself falling into.

kale is probably my favorite green. it's milder than other greens like mustard or chard and it has more texture and heft than boring old spinach (which also has the non-benefit of making my teeth feel weird - thanks oxalate, you jerk!).

anyway, for this you just need one bunch of kale (washed, stems removed, and chopped into vaguely bite-sized pieces - 1"-2" or so), some garlic and/or shallots or onion, a can of white beans, and a can of diced tomatoes. heat a teaspoon or so of oil in a large pan (medium heat), then add the garlic/shallot/onion. let these cook for a minute or so, then add the kale. stir it around a bit and let it go for another two minutes-ish, then add the tomatoes (with their juice) and the beans (drained and preferably rinsed, because that bean-juice in cans is so nastily viscous). then you are basically done. let it cook, stirring occasionally, for perhaps another 10 - 15 minutes or until the kale becomes texturally pleasing to you. that's it! maybe also add some salt. a little lemon juice or cider or balsamic vinegar is nice, too.

the great thing about this is that it's vegan and it has lots of protein and vitamins. you can also grate a little cheese on it if you're feeling frisky. we had some cotija cheese that went particularly well with it, but asiago or parmesan would also be nice. it's also good warm or at room temperature, so if you can't stand the thought of hanging in the breakroom with your homies, you can hunch over it in your cubicle while reading a magazine. your choice!

here are the ingredients of my lunch today. i roasted a chicken the other day, so we already had some cooked leftovers. if you don't have a roast chicken in your fridge, you could always get one of those rotisserie ones or use tofu or add the extra step of cooking up a chicken breast. but it's definitely quicker if you have chicken that's already cooked. obviously.

other than that you just need a stalk of broccoli, a couple of cloves of garlic, a shallot (or equivalent amount of onion, or just leave it out), and perhaps half a jalapeño or other pepper (this one was mild). you can also add whatever else you have around - scallions and/or cilantro would be nice, as would some peanuts or cashews. but lo! i had none of those.

this is actually kind of similar to the kale thing in that you cook the garlic and whatever (here, shallot and jalapeño) for a hot minute, then add the green stuff (broccoli!) and let it cook for a bit. once i put the broccoli in, i added a tablespoon or so of water and then covered the pan and let it steam-cook for about two or three minutes. basically from here on out it depends on how crunchy you want your broccoli to be. i think mine cooked for a total of 7 or 8 minutes. the timing also depends on how large your broccoli chunks are - the smaller they are, the faster they cook.

once it's just about done, add some soy sauce (to taste, but maybe 1-2 teaspoons) and a teaspoon or so of sesame oil. then add the chicken (if you're using tofu, you could add it soon after the broccoli or cook it separately so it gets sort of crunchy) just to let it get all melded with the other stuff. also, incidentally, i was eating this at home, so i wanted to get it heated through. yay for home-lunch!

when you're ready to eat, a dollop of chili-garlic sauce is a great addition, as is sriracha, if you haven't already used it all up in some terrible apocalypse drink.

if you're taking it to work, you'll probably want to keep it cold until you're ready to eat it because salmonella.

*ingredients for kale thing*

1-2 cloves garlic

1 shallot or 1/4 of an onion

1 small bunch kale

1 can white beans

1 can diced tomatoes

salt

balsamic or cider vinegar, optional

cheese, optional

*ingredients for chicken-broccoli thing*

2 cloves garlic

1 shallot or 1/4 of an onion

1/2 mild jalapeño or other chili or some red bell pepper

1 largish stalk broccoli

1/3 - 1/2 cup chopped, cooked chicken

soy sauce and sesame oil, to taste

chili-garlic sauce and/or sriracha, to taste

other good additions - sesame seeds, nuts, other vegetables

listening to: the clientele

foldy-eggs/cheese/beans breakfast taco

so yes, we're moving back to austin soon. i graduate in may and we'll be back home before june. it will be hard to leave Beautiful Portland, but i'm extremely excited about being back in austin. it's too bad one can't live in two places at once. on days like today i'm especially in love with portland - it's sunny and flowery and chilly and fresh (the air here is the very freshest ever).

but then i think about friends and family and breakfast tacos and i can't wait to get back to austin. the breakfast taco is probably austin's official dish. if it isn't, it should be. simple, cheap, filling and delicious, it fills the four corners of a square meal perfectly.

i used to make mine with scrambled eggs and refried beans and then put grated cheddar cheese on top. that's cool and all, but now that i have learned the (ridiculously-easy-why-didn't-i-think-of-this) secret to smooth meltylicious cheese inside the eggs, i definitely think it's the way to go.

it isn't really even a secret. it's more like making a little simple omelet and using that instead of regular eggs + the grated cheese that never really melts properly. the original idea is from deb, whose website smitten kitchen is all sorts of inspirational. she makes the eggs into a square, however, so that they are all ready for a tasty breakfast sandwich.

as a good once and future austinite, i of course had to try it with a breakfast taco. this is really more about the mechanics than about a recipe, per se. first, cut some slices of a good cheddar or maybe pepper jack cheese. you don't need very much - maybe two or three thin slices (you could also use grated cheese, but i hate grating cheese). then you want to whisk an egg or two with a little salt and pepper and splosh them in a hot-ish pan (medium heat) with an adequate amount of butter. tilt the pan all over so that the eggs make a nice thin layer. let it cook for a bit until the eggs begin to set up, then put the cheese on top.

then use a spatula (i use a flexible silicon one) to fold the eggs over the cheese and themselves. for a taco, you don't make the square that is shown in the sandwich recipe - just fold the sides in so that it makes a long narrow rectangle-ish thing. i then heat up some (canned. the SHAME.) refried beans in the same pan, although if you're worried about overcooking the eggs you can be heating the beans up separately or put the eggs on your plate while you heat the beans. heat up a nice flour tortilla and you're all set!

spread the beans onto the tortilla, then add the foldy-cheese-eggs and some good salsa and you're good to go for the day.

(incidentally, these days the dogs are all about piling up into a comfort heap and enjoying the sun. i so envy their utter lack of Things to Do)

i have to admit that the picture of the taco above, with its petite line of salsa, does not truly represent my insane salsa predilections. below is a more accurate display of the amount of salsa i actually use. yikes.

*ingredients*

2 eggs

salt & pepper

2-3 thin slices cheese

1 flour tortilla

1/4 - 1/3 cup refried beans (i accidentally used too much in this taco, which made it rather difficult to eat. don't be like me!)

salsa

listening to: a weirdo medley of cruiserweight and grimes.

split pea soup with smoked turkey (or smoky cauliflower)

first things first - split pea soup is not the belle of the ball. it's homely in both the american and the british sense (more like what we mean when we say "homey" - like the simple comforts of home). until this week, it was also something that i can't remember eating, if i ever have, because it almost invariably has a ham hock or something like that in it.

i was a vegetarian for a number of years, then about 10 years ago i started eating fish occasionally. i guess it was a slippery slope, because a few years after that i moved on to humanely-raised poultry as well. we still don't eat much meat - i probably do once a week or so, on average. i never took up eating beef, pork, etc. (it just was never something we really ate when i was growing up and it doesn't appeal to me) either, so i've missed out on split pea soup for way too long.

however, the store at which i get our poultry (new seasons market - it only carries humanely-raised meats, which i think is important to support) recently started carrying smoked turkey sometimes. when i saw some huge crazy dinosaur-turkey wings and some pretty split peas, it all came together in a perfect storm of delicious. you could, of course, also use a ham hock or whatever if you are of more of a pork-eating persuasion. or make some roasted cauliflower with lots of smoked paprika tossed into it and use that - it won't be the same, but it will be vegan and (i'm pretty sure) equally tasty.

this soup only has 6 ingredients and is incredibly simple to make. as i mentioned previously, i'm super busy these days with working, going to school, job-searching, and preparing to move back to texas (!), so ease and simplicity in food-making is particularly appealing right now.

for a pretty big pot of soup (it only gets better the next day/s) you need about 1 - 1 1/2 pounds of dried split peas (i used yellow and green, but i don't think color matters once it's cooked), a couple of carrots, an onion, garlic (i used 5 large cloves because we are Garlic People, but you can use less if you plan on making out with someone later on), a couple of stems of thyme and some smoked turkey on the bone. dead easy.

first chop up the vegetables. the garlic just needs a largish mince, then do the carrots and onions in a large dice. i used organic carrots, so i didn't even peel them - just cut them into quarters the long way then cut into medium chunks. i leave the thyme as it is and just stick the whole stems and leaves in - the leaves end up falling off as it cooks, so just remember to take the stems out before you chow down. you could also add a bay leaf or two, but i didn't have any and i'm not 100% convinced that they really add anything.

heat 1-2 tablespoons of oil in a large pot on medium heat. put the onion in and let it cook down a bit - you don't necessarily need it to brown, but just let it get kind of translucent - maybe let it go for 5 minutes or so, stirring relatively frequently. then add the garlic and let that go for another minute-ish before adding the carrot and thyme. after another couple-few minutes (3?), add the peas and whole turkey wings, and cover with water. you want the water to cover everything by a solid 2-3 inches or so.

eek. these are the (slightly scary) smoked turkey wings. i don't know if it's the fresh air or the roaming they do as they grow or if i just don't really know how big turkeys are, but these seemed HUGE. i think one could definitely use 2 instead of 3 in this, but they were really good (and super cheap), so i'm content with having used 3.

turn the burner up to high until the water boils, then turn it down to low-medium and let those puppies cook together until the peas get tender. this will probably take a while, but you don't have to be hovering over the pot the whole time. just go do whatever you need to around the house and check and stir everything every so often (15 minutes? 30? i think either is fine, as long as the heat is pretty low).

once the peas are pretty tender, take the turkey wings out and set them aside in something, leaving the peas to cook more. once the wings cool, you can strip the delicious smoky meat off them and add it back to the soup. it's pretty tough from the smoking, so you want to tear it into pretty small pieces (like bite-sized for a pomeranian? probably not much bigger than your thumbnail). add the meat into the cooking peas and just keep cooking everything until most of the peas disintegrate and the whole thing is soft and thick and comforting, just like a big fat wool sweater of a soup (i think mine ended up cooking for about 3 hours, in total. but don't let it scare you - most of it is unattended and it is so worth it!). if it seems to be too thick at any point, add some more water. it's not a terribly exacting sort of recipe.

once it's done, you may need to add a little salt, pepper, or more thyme. the smoked turkey can be quite salty, though, so definitely wait until the end so you can see if it even needs it.

see? not that pretty. but as jean-ralphio would say (and as i've been repeating in my head for the last 5 days or so), that shiz is straight-up deloicious.

if you want to try the cauliflower thing, i would roast it with a good couple of teaspoons of smoked paprika, then add it towards the end of cooking the peas so it doesn't get too mushy.

*ingredients*

1 - 1 1/2 lbs (or so - like 3-4 cups?)

2 carrots

1 onion

3-5 cloves garlic

2-3 thyme stems

2-3 smoked turkey wings (or 1/2 a cauliflower, roasted, or other smoked things)

listening to: grizzly bear (really just all of veckatimest), covers of daydream believer (rip, davy jones)

midnight in pears - dark chocolate & pear cake

cake is pretty much always a good idea. bold words, i know, but they're true.

you may think that cake is too much of a hassle. you may think you don't have time to make a cake. that may be sort of true, but i'm about as busy as i've ever been and i'm still happy that i made time for cake. you can do it!

this cake was part of the spread at our friends' annual pun-filled oscar party. past offerings have included "precious: based on the liquor gin by bombay sapphire" and (from others) "tuna avotartare." this year i made this cake - midnight in pears - and "The Help yourself to some biscuits and gravy." other people brought "eggstremely loud and incredibly quiche" and "gary old ham," among other delicacies. a good time was had by all! oscar fever!

i wasn't super sure about chocolate and pears, but they actually go together remarkably well. this recipe was based on one from epicurious, but i made a few changes because i am incapable of leaving well enough alone.

one thing i always do with cakes (and particularly with upside-down fruit-containing cakes) is line the pan with parchment paper. this makes it so much simpler to get it out of the pan in one piece and it keeps it looking pretty. also, origami!

take a square of parchment paper that is a little bigger than your cake pan. i used an 8" pan with 2" sides. fold it in half and then in half again and again like this (so basically you start with a square, fold to a rectangle, fold to a triangle, and keep folding the triangle into smaller triangles):

keep folding until you have a narrow series of folds with a point at the end.

then just put the point of the paper in the center of the pan and use scissors to cut the end of the paper at a very slight curve so that when you unfold the parchment it fits neatly into your pan. et voila!

you can also put the pan on top of the paper and trace around it with a pencil or whatever, but i think this is faster and more fun. also, who has pencils anymore?

butter the pan underneath the parchment, then butter the sides, then go ahead and butter the parchment as well. live a little!

now, go ahead and preheat your oven to 350. then cut up your pears. i used three bosc pears, because they looked best at the market, but you can probably use whatever. i don't really know anything about differences between pears. i'm sure someone on the internets does, though, if you're interested.

peel each, cut them in half, and take out the seedy area. i used a metal teaspoon and it worked really well and looked pretty, but if you are a Fancy Person with a melon baller, you could also use that. if you are a normal person, you could use like a spoon or summat. then just set the cut half on a board and cut slices as below. i got about 8 slices per half.

time for caramel!

in the original recipe it felt like the caramel recipe they use is a little fussy. it also uses a lot of water which is just going to boil off anyway. i used 3/4 cup sugar and 1/3 cup water and it worked fine. you put these in a scrupulously clean pan and heat it over mediumish heat. don't mess with it! the sugar will dissolve and it will start bubbling and be very hot and scary. eventually, it will get all golden at the outer edges. you can swirl it to ensure that it all goldens at the same time. let it get pretty dark, then add 1 tablespoon of butter, stir it in and put it in your prepared pan. here is a video for making a caramel sauce that shows the process better. this is basically the same, but without the cream and with different amounts of things.

seriously, though, this stuff is REALLY hot, so don't be tempted to lick the spoon or drip it on your arm or anything. not that you would, but don't. now that i'm thinking about it, you could probably also just put some brown sugar and a little butter underneath the pears and not bother with the caramel and it would also probably work fine. a little splash of bourbon is a good idea at this point, too - some for you, some for the cake!

then just layer the pears in there. i like to use the prettiest pears on the bottom layer, since that's what you'll see once you upside-down it. but you don't have to be too fussy.

then set it aside (if you use the caramel, the pan will be awfully hot, so put it on a trivet or something, for god's sake) and chop up some dark chocolate (~4 oz).

add it to 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) of butter and put it in a pan over low heat. or you could probably microwave it, but i don't have a microwave. i actually used the same pan i made the caramel in, because i am quite lazy. keep an eye on it, but you can mix up the dry ingredients while the chocolate and butter melt (unless you have the heat too high don'tdothat).

i just put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and whisk them a bit - sifting always seems a little frou-frou. once the chocolate and butter melt, add 2-3 tablespoons of coffee and beat them with 2/3 of a cup of sugar for 3-5 minutes. i always add coffee to chocolate cakes - it doesn't make them taste coffee-y, they just get more chocolatey. the original recipe says "until light and fluffy" but i just don't see how that's possible with melted chocolate. then add 2 eggs, one at a time, mixing full in between each addition, then the vanilla. if you have some chocolate extract, a teaspoon of that is a good call, too.

then add 1/3 of the dry ingredient mixture, then 1/4 cup of milk, then another 1/3 of the dry mixture, then the other 1/4 cup milk, then the rest of the dry, mixing in between each addition. this sounds like a hassle, but it really takes like 2 minutes, tops. then just pour it over the pears and caramel.

you can taste a little of the batter, if you like. it is very good. bake it for 45 minutes to an hour. i baked mine for an hour because it seemed very jiggly on top still after 45 minutes, but then i felt like it was a little dry, so i would probably take it out after 55 minutes or a little less next time. it depends on your pan size, too - if you have a 9" pan i'd maybe let it go for only 45 minutes.

it's not like it's going to be bad, either way. we ate it right up.

*ingredients*

adapted from upside-down pear chocolate cake, by cory schreiber & julie richardson

caramel:

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

1 tablespoon butter

1 splash bourbon (after caramel is in the cake pan)

3 pears

cake:

4 oz chopped dark chocolate

1/4 cup butter

2-3 tablespoons nice dark coffee

2/3 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla (+ 1 teaspoon chocolate extract, optional)

5 oz flour (1 cup)

1 oz cocoa (1/3 cup)

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup milk

listening to: i can't get this new santigold song out of my head. the video quality isn't great, but i like the girls with the fancy umbrellas and live shows are always exciting. here is what i guess is a more official video with weird animation. also phoenix (did you know myspace was still a thing? me either!)

chocolate & peanut cookies

peanuts! chocolate! delicious salty salt! i like to bake and i can sometimes be in the mood for sweet things, but for the most part, my tastes tend toward the more saline end of the spectrum.* these cookies hit it right on both levels - dark chocolate for sweet and roasted salted peanuts for a savory kick.

*although mike did buy me a gigantic thing of twizzlers for valentine's day and even opened them ahead of time so they kind of dried out a little in the way that i find most pleasing. i never said i had perfect taste. i like quality chocolate and terrible artificial waxcandy. it's an illness. if i had to pick two candies to be the only ones i could ever have again, they would probably be gummy bears and dried-out twizzlers. it's gross. sorry.

oh, but these cookies are for-real good. i don't much care for peanut butter cookies (peanut butter chocolate meta-cookies aside) because i feel like they have a weird texture. these have more of a traditional chocolate chip cookie base but they end up tasting something like peanut butter cookies, without the strange sandiness.

i based the recipe on the New York Times's perfect chocolate chip cookies, but obviously made some significant changes. if you want a really good regular chocolate chip cookie, though, i heartily recommend those. they are aces. but so are these!

the NYT recipe calls for picky things like 2 kinds of sugar, 2 kinds of flour and chocolate fèves. i KNOW! what the h is a fève? apparently it is just a fancy-people word for disc. still, i don't necessarily want to have to go to a fancy-people store every time i want to make delicious cookies. so i just chopped up a giant dark chocolate bar. i liked it better that way anyway, because when you chop chocolate you end up with some largish chunks and some tiny bits, which makes for great texture and flavor throughout.

i also cut down on the salt a little, since the peanuts i used were already quite salty. i did use two kinds of flour, but they were just regular all purpose and whole wheat flours, not fancypants cake and bread flours. i like using a little whole wheat flour in cookies, because it makes them a little more nutty-tasting and it gives one a (false!) sense of health when eating them. also i used just one kind of sugar, because i was out of brown sugar. but if you have some, a mix would be nice. finally, i added peanuts, because yum.

if you have a scale, i really recommend using it because it is much more easy and more exact than using cup measurements. but i looked up equivalents, so if you are scale-less, you can try it that way.

these follow the basic rules of cookie-making - cream together the butter and sugar until it's light and fluffy (~5 minutes), then add the eggs one at a time, mixing in between each addition. mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then add to the butter-sugar-eggs and mix until just combined (~20 seconds). it will be fairly dry and crumbly, but that's okay. then add the chopped chocolate and peanuts and use your big tough arm muscles to blend them in. sometimes it's easiest to just make sure your hands are super-clean and combine things with them - the dough is pretty stiff.

it's best if you can let the dough sit in the refrigerator for a day or three so that everything gets to hang out for awhile and get friendly (see explanation in the NYT article). but i was in a hurry, since i was making these for a work thing the next day, so i made them right away and they were still great. so it's up to you. you could even do some right away and some later - this recipe makes A Lot of cookies. you could also cut the recipe in half if you are worried about having tons of tasty cookies around.

when you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350. line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silpat. you can make these in whatever size you like. i wanted large but not gigantor cookies, so mine were about largish golf ball-sized. i rolled them by hand and flattened them down a little bit once they were on the baking sheet. i got about 9 on each large baking sheet and they ended up being about 3" in diameter once baked.

bake them for 15-18 minutes, depending on your oven and on how crunchy you'd like them to be. i erred on the side of crunchiness, leaving them in for about 18 minutes or until they were a dark toasty golden on the bottom. they're pretty delicate when they come out, so slide them onto a baking rack or something, but leave them on the parchment until they've cooled a bit.

then grab a big glass of milk and be happy. or bring them to your coworkers, friends, or neighbors and let them be happy. or both.

*ingredients*

16 oz sugar - white, brown, or a mix (somewhere around 2 cups. with brown, you get more moisture, so they may be less crunchy than mine were. which is not a bad thing, necessarily)

2 sticks butter, softened to room temperature

2 large eggs, also at room temperature

16 oz flour (i used 10 oz white and 6 oz whole wheat, which the internet says is equivalent to ~ 2 1/4 to 2 1/3 cups and a little less than 1 1/2 cups, respectively. but get a scale! they're cheap!)

1 1/4 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt (kosher, please. table salt is gross. if you must use it, though, i'd go with like 1/2 tsp)

12 oz chopped dark chocolate (~ 2 to 2 1/2 cups. you could use chocolate chips, but chopping it yourself is much better, i think. chop so that most pieces are the size of smallish peas)

6-7 oz chopped roasted, salted peanuts (~ 1 1/2 cups)

listening to: okkervil river, clem snide. are you on spotify? me too! http://open.spotify.com/user/leelarice

fennel & apple slaw with citrus

the super bowl is today and what is more super-bowly than a crisp cool slaw? probably a lot, actually, like guacamole or nachos or (i guess this is a thing?) an entire edible stadium made of things like cold cuts, twinkies, and pigs-in-blankets.

this is not at all decadent or cheese-laced, so it's probably more like something you might want to eat tomorrow, after the delicious orgy of gluttony that this mighty day inspires.

this is a very simple and quick salad that uses some of the greats of winter produce - citrus and fennel. a little apple adds some sweetness, while celery brings more crunch. a bunch of scallions lend their mild vegetal bite and some apple cider vinegar ups that slaw-y tang.

basically the majority of the time it takes to put this together lies in cutting up the ingredients. slice the scallions into small coins or slightly on the bias to add a little more angular visual interest. slice the celery (i used 4-5 of the small tender inside ribs - the outer ones are more tough and may be better saved for a mirepoix or something, although if you do use them i would make sure to slice them extra-thinly) into crescents of ~ 1/8 of an inch or so.

cut the fennel in half lengthwise (in the picture above, you'd cut right down the middle) - fennel bulbs are kind of ovoid in shape, so you're cutting through the thinner side. then cut out the core using two cuts going down from the top of the core like an inverted V. slice the fennel very thinly, going horizontally from the bottom to the top. here is a very advanced diagram:

i'm pretty sure we're on the same page now. also, i always save the fennel fronds and add them in for a wispy garnishy effect. the rest of the fennel cast-offs can be saved in your freezer bag of stock-makings.

so yeah, get your ingredients cut up. for the apple, i quartered it and cut out the core, then cut the quarters in half (as you can see in the bottom left of the picture below) and then cut them into kind of large matchsticks or so. you could also use a mandoline to slice the everything but the scallions, but i think it's pretty easy to cut things up by hand.

put it all in a big bowl and add maybe 1/4 teaspoon each of orange and lemon zests. you can use more if you like, but the oils in the peel start to be more assertive after it sits for a bit and you want to make sure that all of the other flavors aren't overpowered.

then add the juice from the whole orange (or half, if it's enormous) and maybe half the lemon. add about a tablespoon or a little less of apple cider vinegar and 1/4 teaspoon or so of salt. i sweetened it with about 2 tablespoons of agave syrup, because i had it on hand and it dissolves well in cold liquids, unlike honey. you could also use some sugar to taste.

and that's it! this is a nice crunchy salad with some pleasant sweetness and brightness from the lemon and orange. i imagine it would also be good with different types of citrus - meyer lemons, blood oranges, tangerines, or grapefruits would all be interesting to try. also some radishes might be a good addition.

*ingredients*

1 bulb fennel

4-5 small inner stalks of celery

1 apple

a small bunch scallions (~5 or 6)

small amount of zest from 1 orange and 1 lemon

juice from 1 orange

juice from 1/2 lemon

~1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

~2 tablespoons agave syrup or sugar, to taste

listening to: iron and wine, the sea and cake, the slug and lettuce (two are bands, one is a british chain of pubs. but which is which?!)