Chickpea Cakes with Cucumber-Yogurt Sauce ♥

Today's vegetarian quick supper recipe: Chickpea Cakes aka chickpea patties or chickpea burgers. What is the difference between a "cake" and a "pattie" and a "burger"? Never mind. Served with a little Cucumber-Yogurt Sauce aka tzatziki on the side, these are great, with a nubbly texture, plenty of moistness and lots of fresh flavor. Weight Watchers 4 to 5 points.

One thing's for certain, we each get 24 hours in a day. No matter who we are and where we live. No matter our age, our education, our bank accounts, our weight, our ambition, our baggage, our Facebook friends, our cars, our clothes, our homes, our good intentions. Nobody is shorted for 23 hours, no one can buy 25.

So February 29th is a special day, a day that comes just once every four years, often enough to take notice, rare enough to not waste. Every four years, we get the gift – all of us – of an extra day, a whole day, an entire yet-to-be-explored, yet-to-be-lived day.

How do you spend February 29th? Is it a day of contemplation? of carefree live 'n' let live? Is it a day to play it safe in simple gratitude for oh-so-many gifts or one to toss gifts to the wind, risking plain gifts for gifts with ribbons? Is it a day to step forward or step back? And oh yes, is taking a step back really ten steps forward? Or is it the other way 'round, that a step forward really means slipping twenty steps back? Life math so confuses me.

February 29th. Make it a good one.
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Fennel-Apple Salad ♥ with Orange-Zest Candied Black Walnuts

Today's winter salad: Chopped fennel and apple served atop orange rounds. This is a decidedly savory fruit salad but is topped by not-to-be-missed candied black walnuts brightened with orange zest. Vegan.

Story goes that Cajun culturist Justin Wilson, when asked what's for supper, will answer with his own question, "Whaddaya got?" and then decide. Do you cook in that inspired, improvisational way? If so, I bow in homage! Me, nearly always I am a "recipe cook" who starts with a list of ingredients, albeit one who then tugs and twists those ingredients to simplify techniques and match my idea of what's good and what's healthy.

Last week, the Missouri Organic Association hosted its annual conference here in St. Louis and three local chefs and three local bloggers teamed up for an Iron Chef-style cookoff. Talk about cooking outside my comfort zone – in public!

But I must say, talk about a total kick, thanks to my collaborator chef Pat Long from Cafe Mosaic in Washington, Missouri. In one hour, the challenge was to somehow start to finish combine three surprise ingredients, tilapia, sunchokes and black walnuts. The salad here is one of two dishes Pat and I really liked, especially the candied black walnuts made special with the addition of orange zest. (Did I say orange zest? Yes I did!) Bummer, the judges didn't agree – except for the candied black walnuts!
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Special (Useful & Informative) Stuff ♥ from A Veggie Venture

So who else has a junk drawer where you stash little bits and pieces of indispensable useful and necessary "stuff"? I have one in the kitchen – though somewhere along the way we started to call it the drunk door not the junk drawer. (That's amusing, of course, only because there's no alcohol issue here.) Anyway. That drawer is home to anything-to-everything from keys to rubberbands to odd tools to 3x5 recipe cards to chapstick to dozens of small items handy to keep handy. I open this drawer many times a day and still couldn't tell you exactly what's in it without an audit.

Well, that's what this page is all about, it's a collection of ""stuff" collected over the years – writing not easily categorizable but nonetheless useful. So I've started a collection of this Special Stuff – posts that I hope readers find helpful and informative and now that they're in one place, easy to find, too.
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