Cream of Broccoli & Leek Soup

Spring has finally arrived here in New Jersey. I know that usually means that we usually pack away the soup pots for the summer, but I wasn't ready to let go! Spring trips to the farmers market brings new potatoes, asparagus and leeks! Spring leeks have the mildest flavor and pair perfectly with the broccoli in this soup.

I decided to keep this soup on the heartier side. Since it getting warmer, you can decide whether you want to add heavy cream or not. I went with the cream for this particular batch, then we went out for ice cream. It's all about balance!

One Year Ago: Jell-O Peeps (Easter must have been later last year!)
Three Years Ago: Perry's Ice Cream Factory Tour
Four Years Ago: Grilled Chicken & Potatoes
Five Years Ago: Rosemary Foccacia

Hoisin Chicken Stir Fry

It's another snow day here in Central New Jersey! The snow is coming down steady and it's a good heavy snow. The kind of snow that makes perfect snowmen. You can start with a tiny snowball and roll it up into a giant car-sized ball, perfect for carving out into an igloo. Have you ever made a snow igloo? Growing up in Buffalo, we had many winter igloos in our yard each year!

Sadly, I'll be working from home today, not playing outside and making giant snow igloos. On the bright side, I made this stir fry last night! Lunch hour will be tasty leftovers. This recipe comes together so quickly, I probably could prepare this fresh again today in less than fifteen minutes. Plus, this recipe has hoisin in it and I love anything with hoisin!

Are you stuck inside again today because of the weather? This snowstorm is huge! Stay safe and warm everyone, Spring is coming soon! Until then, I'll be looking out the window at the falling snow, drinking hot chocolate.

Two Years Ago: Biscofferoos
Three Years Ago: Homemade Greek Yogurt
Four Years Ago: Sugar Crisp Cookies

Summertime Salad

One of my favorite thing to to during the summer is to make vegetable slaws. I'll put together the ingredients on Sunday and toss the dressing with the veggies when I'm ready to eat. This brocolli slaw is my absolute favorite thing to make in the summer.

Normally, I hate raw broccoli. It just tastes dry and boring to me. When mixed with slivered almonds and dried cranberries, broccoli becomes so much more delicious. This is the only reason I ever have mayonnaise in my house.

If you are heading to a pot luck picnic, having a quiet dinner at home, or want something to eat at midnight, make this recipe. It barely takes any time at all to prepare and lasts for at least five days in the fridge. Well, it will last for five days, but I doubt it will stick around that long. I've been known to eat a big bowl of this stuff for lunch.

Lightened Mac'n'Cheese

Tuesday I told you about my treadmill running.  Today, I'd like to discuss running outside!  Long runs are best done outside. The monotony of the treadmill would make any run longer than four or five miles a chore. Boyfriend prefers running outside.  Mostly because he falls off the treadmill.  His legs are too long.  He also likes running in the rain and cold.  Something about "earning it."

My 8am, 6 mile run this Saturday took my from my apartment, down a wide street and through the park. It was exactly six miles, an out and back run with a loop through the park. On my outdoor runs, I keep track of my pace and mileage with MapMyRun+ on my iPhone. It tracks me with satellites and records my route down to the closest 1/100th of a mile.

The nice lady in the app tells me when I reach each mile and how fast I'm going. I know that if my pace drops below nine minutes per mile, that I need to pick up my feet for the next mile. The mile callouts are helpful when I'm doing an out and back run, rather than a loop.

When my workout is over, the app shows me my splits for every mile I ran, along with a terrain map. That way I can tell that lost a minute from my pace when I was heading uphill.

This weekend I'm heading to Buffalo to visit my parents and the Perry's ice cream factory. This means that I will be doing my long run in the Buffalo cold. I bought a hat and gloves just for the trip! I will even show my mom how to track me on her phone, just so she can make sure I didn't slack off and stop at my brothers house for a break!

Three and a half weeks until my half marathon and I'm looking forward to it! We'll see if BF joins me on my run, he's been too busy to train with me! Silly work is getting in the way. Now I just have to find the perfect running outfit and I'll be ready to hit the starting line.  I can tell you one thing, it will be neon and you'll see me coming!

Today I made you something ahead of time!  I've been spending a bit of time each Sunday, preparing a meal that BF can just put in the oven.  This way dinner can be on the table when I get home, with minimal work from either of us.  Starting in April this will be a biweekly post, so stay tuned for Make Ahead Mondays!  This week, I made you some lightened mac'n'cheese.  Yum.

Chicken and Broccoli

That's right.  You read the title correctly.  This Wilde girl is heading home to Buffalo this weekend!  I'm very excited.  There are plans in the works for lunch at my parents house (it is rumored to involve apple cobbler), breakfast at my favorite local restaurants with boyfriend and dinner with the in-laws.

This visit was only planned last Saturday, as we were groggily trying to acclimate ourselves to the eastern time zone.  Did you know that Alaska is in it's own time zone?  One hour further west of pacific standard time!  Couple that with the fact that the sun gets up much later in our New Jersey apartment than it did in our cruiseship stateroom and you've got two people waking up at almost 10am.  This is a huge deal for me.  I'm usually up by 7:30 on the weekends.

I suppose that the idea for the visit was hatched a few weeks ago, when I said "we could go to Buffalo for labor day weekend."  While on the cruise, boyfriend said "I looked at flights for next weekend, we should book tickets soon."  Come Saturday, boyfriend was sitting at his computer and booking the 8pm flight for Friday night.  Why the ticket says we take off at 8:01 and get to Buffalo at 10:05 is beyond me.  The flight is only an hour.  Those airlines are padding their time to make me feel better when we land "early" at 9:45, even though we took off 45 minutes late.  I'm not fooled airlines!

Moving on...  Other than spending time with my parents (who I haven't seen since Christmas) and boyfriends parents (who I can't remember when I saw them last!), we have no plans for our little weekend getaway.  It will probably involve getting a Ted's hotdog while drinking an overly sweet loganberry, chowing down on some John and Mary's chicken tenders while eyeing up Nina's ice cream across the street and driving by the now empty lot that used to hold the Swiss Chalet, wiping a tear from my eye.

Oh yes, there will be cobbler too.  I have a text message confirmation.  Bring on Friday!

And...  I get to see these little ladies.  They're one year old now!

And they're pretending to be little old eastern European ladies...

Grilled Chicken & Potatoes

I'm back from Chicago and back to work.  For some reason I decided that I didn't need to change the time on my watch while I was away.  People kept suggesting that I could easily change the time (with a simple turn of the knob!) and just change it back when I returned.  I told them not to be silly.  My phone acts as my real clock, my watch acts as the minute hand.

Think about it.  How often do you find yourself not knowing approximately what time it is?  Almost never.  Usually only in the middle of the night, when you are thrown awake from a dream, having no idea where you are and what time it is.  Well, maybe that was just me this week, sleeping in my big hotel room bed.

By keeping my wristwatch on east coast time, I feel like I saved myself at least a whole minute of time.  Now I just have to get back onto east coast time!  I don't think that you can say that you have jet lag when you've only flown from one time zone to the next.  Also, half of my company was at this conference with me.  I don't think it will go over well if I'm dragging and complaining today, when everyone else is in the same boat!  Better go get some caffeine and get some work done.  I've got to put all my new conference knowledge to use!

Creamy Vegetable Soup

I have been trying to decide what to share with you today, then I realized that all of the recipes that I made this weekend either consisted of soup or pretzels.  And since pretzels are delegated for Thursdays post, I am giving you some more delicious soup!  I have been quickly going through my stock of stocks (hah!) because of one person.  Boyfriend.

Boyfriend has come down with some sort of fever-raising, cough-inducing sickness, brought on by the below-human temperatures that exist in his office.  I think that many people deal with the same thing at this time of year, especially if you work in an office and most definitely if you work in a lab.  These two environments are not good at regulating temperatures.  Office buildings are broken up into little rooms and it is unlikely that there will be a heat register in each office.  This means that some offices are a million degrees and some offices are freezing cold.

The same hot/cold situation exists in most lab spaces as well, but for a completely different reason.  Chemists work inside of hoods, which are basically like your oven hood, except our hoods are completely enclosed and have doors that raise and lower like a garage door.  These hoods pull air in from the lab space and send it out through the filters on the roof.  The rate of air being pulled out of the lab isn't always matched by the amount of air replaced by the heaters.  Hence, the labs and offices get pretty chilly.

Look how thick and delicious!!!

I have the ability to throw on an additional sweater under my labcoat, where boyfriend has to look like a business guy and not wear layers of jackets around the office.  Therefore he gets chilly and lowers his defenses to the cold and flu viruses floating about in the office.  Then he gets sick and I feed him lots of vegetables and vitamins!

Broccoli Slaw

Have you ever had something to eat that was so delicious, you couldn’t stop thinking about it? Five years ago I was at a picnic in Madison, enjoying some rare summertime sun. A pot luck event, everyone brought something to share. Being a baker, I brought cookies. Everyone loves cookies. There was something unexpected on the table, a broccoli slaw.

Now I am not usually one for raw broccoli. In fact I find it hard to get down if it’s not cooked. This slaw was surprising. I piled a little on my plate, along with my Boca burger and chips. Trying a little of everything (to be sure I didn’t insult anyone) I filled my plate. After my first taste I was hooked on this slaw. I went back to get more, and more, then I picked up the bowl and brought it to the table so I could continue to graze.

I must have eaten half of the bowl, and then I realized that the person who made it was gone! I didn’t know this person other than a name. I was too busy eating platefuls of broccoli and now the slaw was a mystery!

For years I kept thinking about this dish. I’m not a slaw expert, so I had no idea where to start to replicate the recipe. Finally this year, the craving was satisfied. And because of this, my undying love and devotion go out to Deb from Smitten Kitchen. I can take no credit for this recipe because it was perfect the way it was written. Now with this recipe, I find myself standing by the fridge nibbling from the bowl. At least it’s a vegetable, right?

Soy Lemon Broccoli

There are quite a few things that my father and I have in common. We have the same brown eyes (although I often long for my mother’s green eyes), we are both huge nerds (c’mon, PhD chemist here and chemical engineer there, there’s no denying it) and we both excel at calculus. Maybe that last one falls in with the second one… There is one thing that we share that no one else in my family does, a love of broccoli. My mother and brother won’t go near the stuff.

Broccoli (aka little trees) has long been a dinnertime staple in the Wilde kitchen. It just was never made in very large bunches. Growing up, we would get the packages of frozen broccoli from the giant and boil it up for dinner. The little trees would be passed around the table, mostly missing one half of the table. Mom, being a grown-up, was allowed to pass. Brother, being only a year older than me, was forced to put a few trees on his plate (where they would be pushed around for a while before being tossed in the garbage). My Dad and I would generously pile those little trees on our plates.

Personally, I was a big fan of the “leafy” part. I thought they had more flavor and were also way more interesting. The trunk of the tree was less appetizing, but I ate it nonetheless. Broccoli would make the rounds in the vegetable cycle. Corn, peas, green beans, broccoli, anything that the giant had frozen and sent to Wegmans, they all made their appearance in the vegetable cycle. Broccoli was a favorite in the line-up, I could have done without the frozen peas, they were gross.

It wasn’t until years later, living on my own, that I discovered the virtues of fresh broccoli. Buying a crown of broccoli and cooking it up yielded a far more flavorful result than frozen broccoli. Adding things to the broccoli, rather than just eating it plain? Genius.

This dish takes a whole of ten minutes to prepare. Make it when you have no idea what else to put on your plate; you will be very happy with yourself. It is the perfect combination of salty soy sauce and bright lemon. Try not to pair it with an overwhelming main course. Something simple like a roasted chicken or a plain steak would do the trick.

Soy Lemon Broccoli

2 cups broccoli florets

1 tbsp olive oil

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tbsp soy sauce



1. Heat olive oil in sauté pan to medium heat

2. Add garlic and cook for 2 minutes

3. Add broccoli and 3 tbsp water. Cover and allow to cook for 5 minutes

4. Add lemon juice and soy sauce and cook uncovered for another 2-3 minutes.

5. If you find that you added too much water, but your broccoli is done, remove the broccoli and allow sauce to reduce and thicken, then pour over broccoli.