Can you tell that winter is coming from the dark leafy greens that are showing up in my dinners? Although now that I think of it, any season is great for dark leafy greens.

Dinner #1 was 4 vegetables, 4 ways:

• Smashed fingerling potatoes which were boiled, tossed in olive oil, salt, a bit of cayenne pepper, and then roasted.
• Raw kale salad with mashed avocados and a meyer lemon dressing — still using the raw preserved meyer lemons from Jessica.
• Pea shoots stir-fried with garlic.
• Hawaiian eggplant stir-fried Thai-style with veggie shrimp paste, fresh red chillies, and soy sauce,.

The pea shoots were more tender than I thought and tasted fresh and green. The Thai-flavored eggplant was strongly flavored and pungent. This would go well with just a bowl of rice. I think I’m slowly becoming a fan of this raw kale salad fad. Olive oil and salt really does seem to wilt the once-tough leaves into a pleasantly tender texture. The avocado gave the tart dressing a creamier delivery.

Dinner #2 was baked ziti with canned tomato sauce mixed with a creamy blended tofu sauce and then topped with Daiya vegan cheese.  I usually mix the cooked pasta with just the tomato sauce and then layer the tofu sauce on top and then top some more with tomato sauce, but this time I wanted to mix them together, which the BF for some reason yelled about. Who knew he took ziti so personally! Even though I mixed the chopped kale into the sauce, I reserved some on the side for me because I liked the texture of the extremely cooked kale.

I thought the Daiya cheese was going to be a good addition to the top of the pasta and give it that characteristic stringiness real cheese does, which it did, but the taste was so fake-cheese tasting in this dish. Maybe next time, I’ll mix it in better with the pasta.