Alright y’all, time to prove I eat vegetables.
A person can only eat so much kale mk, even if you came around to it like I did after years of side-eye to kale fanatics(thanks Bey!). These carrots are great because there’s very little prep work and few ingredients, they look really nice and colorful, and carrots are freaking awesome. You just braise them in water, a little butter, and a little miso if you please and they come out sweet, simple and delicious.

That being said, they do take TIME: at least 30 mins. I usually start these first and then make the rest of my meal so by the time I’m done with everything the water has simmered off on it’s own and the carrots are tender.

This is great with a grilled steak and a pile of sweet mashed potatoes to round it out!

Recipe

1. Peel and trim your carrots.
2. In a big wide saute pan large enough to hold all your carrots in one layer, melt the butter and miso together on medium to dissolve the miso. I once did this thyme instead of the miso and it was also excellent. The point is this is where you can add a little twist.
3. Add the carrots and let them roll around for a couple minutes in the butter, but you don’t want them to brown AT ALL.
4. Add enough water to cover the carrots. I let it come to a boil while I make a parchment cover.
5. This is the arts and crafts part: take a piece of parchment paper and cut it in a circle that will fit in your pan. Fold the circle in half to cut out a circle of the middle so that there’s a hole. In the end it looks like a misshapen donut. Do you HAVE to do this? I dunno I haven’t tried it without it yet. If your carrots are floating on the water, definitely do it. It not, just half-covering with a lid may work.
6. Turn the pan to medium-low or throw the whole thing in the oven and cook until the carrots are extremely tender and you can stick a fork into it with absolutely no resistance. This is not a FAST process! Leave them along for 30 mins at least! If at this point there is still a lot of water in the pan, turn the heat up and boil off the rest of the water.
7. Once the water has boiled off, you should be left with a shiny glaze. Roll your carrots around in the glaze and enjoy!

No big intro here, just Mama Mona’s soup. Perfect for cold days and it’ll keep in the fridge for yummy, filling lunches. I know y’all don’t think ahead like this BUT for those of you who are about it, you can also freeze portions flat in zip-lock bags and defrost when you want some soup.

Recipe

1. Wash your lentils in a colander and run water until it runs clear, or put them in a bowl and rinse, drain and repeat.
2. Into a pot – add everything. Lentils, veggie chunks, and water or stock. You want the level of liquid to be double the level of the lentils. Add cumin and salt. Let it come to a boil uncovered and then lower to a simmer and cover for about 20 minutes.
3. Stick an immersion blender in that thang, or transfer in batches to a blender.

• I usually will do the following: batch in the blender, blend, and pour into a separate bowl. I continue until it’s all been through the blender once, and then reverse the process and put batches into the blender from the bowl and empty back it into the pot.

4. Taste for salt. If it’s too thick, add water. If it’s too watery, cook it down. If the texture is strange, blend it more. It should be creamy and delicious. If you like it spicy, add cayenne to taste and see what happens.
5. Add olive oil, clarified butter, or regular degular butter in a separate pot. If you have vermicelli or orzo or another baby pasta, toast a handful of it CAREFULLY over LOW heat while standing over it and stirring FREQUENTLY until it’s golden and happy. Add ass many servings of soup as you’re about to eat and stir the noodles in. Raise the heat to medium and cook until the noodles are cooked through.

It has come to my attention that I gotta feed y’all some vegetables. It has also come to my attention that some of you eat raw kale (stop it) and the rest of you think kale is nasty. This shit doesn’t need to take more than ten minutes to make, but I’ll spend some time here taking it back to the start – the grocery store.

Honestly, I go to Whole Paycheck (aka Whole Foods) just to have a fun day. The grocery store isn’t scary! Just stop buying cut up veggie witcha lazy asses. First of all, that bag of pre-cut pre-washed kale is 60% stem. Secondly, I swear it goes bad faster. You try to tightly wrap it back what’s left of the plastic wrap it came in after you tore it up after you had your hands all in it. Now you throw it in a drawer cause you’re tired of looking at your failure and the rest goes bad and what you’re left with is a memory of oily kale stems. Or whatever. Oh, and it was way more expensive.

Just buy a whole bunch of kale. Rip the leaves off the tough stems, and put those torn up leaves in a colander or on a paper towel and wash out the grit. Make that entire bunch, and if you are a rabbit and don’t finish it all stick it in a tupperware and warm it up the next day. This goes for any vegetable! Make the whole batch! Stop playing yourself like two bites of kale is even enough.

This recipe is transferable to every green anything so EAT VEGETABLES.

Recipe

1. Buy one full bunch of kale. Rip the leaves off the tough stems, and put those torn up leaves in a colander or on a paper towel and wash out the grit. Make that entire bunch, and if you are a rabbit and don’t finish it all stick it in a tupperware and warm it up the next day.
2. In the pan, put down olive oil and turn the heat on shy of medium. Add the garlic and crushed red pepper and saute for a couple minutes.

• PRO TIP: it looks like you’re about to make a lot of kale, and this makes it tempting to glug down hella olive oil. Resist. One turn around the pan is enough.
• If you’re making this as part of a meal, I put the olive oil, garlic, and crushed red all in the pan and then I wait until all of the other parts of my meal are done to turn on the heat. In my head this makes the oil more garlicky but do you.

3. Add hella kale! IT COOKS DOWN A LOT. Add way more than you think you want!
4. In a separate DRY pan on LOW heat, add pine nuts and toast them. This is my favorite way to elevate this side dish.
5. Go away. If you keep stirring you’ll never get any crispy bits and it’ll take forever. Once it cooks down some, add your salt and smoked paprika and taste.
6. When it’s cooked to how you like it, squeeze some lemon juice over the top and let it cook down just a smidge. Bet you won’t have leftovers.

Tips

You can vary this a billion ways:

• Add miso paste to the garlic at the beginning and cook that through before you add your kale for a savory kick.
• Add shallot or thinly sliced red onion, or hell even yellow onion, and caramelize it first.
• Use dif nuts, sliced almonds or chunky walnuts are both so yummy here.
• Add zest from that lemon if you’re feelin zesty.