garden | A.Cook in the Making

One of the best pieces of healthy-eating advice I was ever given was to incorporate a rainbow of colors into my daily diet. Doing so provides the body with a wide and diverse variety of essential nutrients. Plus, it looks beautiful! I especially love going to salad bars and piling my plate with all the different colors. I also love putting meals together that incorporate a rainbow, and presenting them in a way that showcases their beauty. Below, some photos of rainbow meals or dishes that I’ve prepared and enjoyed. Thinking about them makes me happy on these cold winter days…

A mango and tomato salsa that Dad and I made last summer, tossed with lime juice, finely chopped onion, and cilantro–SO fresh and delicious!

I bought these absolutely gorgeous groceries and just had to arrange them nicely in a bowl…here we have avocados, lime, lemon, tomato, mango, fresh basil on the left, and fresh cilantro on the right. Pretty sure I was making guacamole that afternoon!

A typical snack for A.Cook…delicious sugar snap peas, baby carrots, and grape tomatoes. YUM.

And finally…

My rainbow of roasted potatoes! Despite the dark picture, I’m sure you can see that this dish contained red, yellow, and purple potatoes! I had never had purple potatoes before this, and though I found them a little starchier and less enjoyable than the others, it won’t stop me from eating them in the future, because really, how can you not love a naturally purple food??

My family has a little garden patch in our backyard which in the past has yielded mixed results. We’ve had pretty decent tomato harvests in the past though! Anyway this year everything is looking uncharacteristically good (no offense, Daddy!), and so yesterday I took some pics to share…

Here is my dad posing (though he doesn’t look like he is…he’s a natural) with a hoe!

Here is the front view of the garden patch (though it’s looking a little busted right now…don’t know what happened to those two slats on the gate but we’d better fix it fast or the rabbits shall be much happier than we…)

And here are our crops!!!

Basil (we have two plants, can you tell which is the older one?): one of my top 5 favorite herbs, and one which I am SO excited to use in recipes very soon