Fresh Beet Pasta + Beet Pesto

Well, 2017 is shaping up to be quite a year so far. I had originally intended for this post to be in support of Planned Parenthood because the color of this pasta screams girl power! But in light of the events of this past weekend, I'm going to cast a wider net. To be frank, the efforts our new president and congress have been making to defund Planned Parenthood, to repeal the Affordable Care Act, to ban people from entering this country based on national origin regardless of immigration status—those efforts cut my heart to the core.

As a woman who believes in her own bodily autonomy, who believes that affordable healthcare is a right and not a privilege, it baffles me that these people who think abortion is a horrible sin are the same ones who want to take away our access to affordable birth control. As an immigrant and former green card holder who only recently (a short 9 months ago) finally gained citizenship after 23 years of living in this country, I cannot fundamentally believe that barring permanent residents who were on vacation from returning home or turning away refugees who are the very victims of terrorism and war is supposed to be good for our "national security".

We cannot sit idly by while they strip away our rights one by one, so if these are issues close to your heart, please join me in donating to Planned Parenthood or the ACLU today. To offer you a little more incentive (in case you can't donate as much as you would like or you just need a little nudge) if you send me a receipt of your donation to summer(at)oandoeats.com I will match your donations dollar for dollar up to a maximum of $500 per organization. Now is the time to fight for what we believe in, so whether you donate, protest, or call your representatives, just know that I'm with you. We are in this together.

I realize that posting a recipe seems kind of hollow at a time like this, but our bodies still need nourishment to fight, and alas this is a food blog first and foremost. I hope you enjoy this bold pink, girl power, immigrant power pasta.

Fresh Fig, Blue Cheese, and Caramelized Onion Salad

Fig season is almost over and this post has been sitting in my draft folder for almost two months. The reason being that every time I sit down to write, I'm at a loss for words. I have no stories, nothing interesting to tell. Thankfully I have blog friends who have been encouraging me to just publish the dang thing.

So for today's post I want to tell you about my typical week. It's pretty mundane, but perhaps it will help us connect as something more than voices over the internet. Okay. Here goes:

Monday through Friday, during the day, I work on the dev team at a tech company in midtown Manhattan where I spend most of my time writing code. Almost daily I get lunch with my work friends, we sit around and shoot the shit. We usually eat in the cafeteria of our building but sometimes go out for lunch, which entails weaving through the bajillion people walking around time's square. Midtown is terrible. Phillip always complains that I'm a slow walker, but he's never seen me power walk down 40th street in a desperate attempt to get back to the office and away from the throngs of tourists.

Wednesday afternoons we have a half hour guided meditation (we get a lot of perks at work). The meditation is different every week, but always focuses on similar themes, my favorite being "mindfulness." We learn to slow down and be mindful of even the most mundane task such as washing your hands or making a sandwich.

Thursday nights after work I go to pottery class from 7 to 10 pm. I'm trying to make my own props! It's actually very difficult to make good looking bowls and plates that don't look like they were clobbered together by a 5 year old, hence why you have yet to see these props in any of my photos, but I still love it and look forward to it every week.

Carrot Cake

Now is around the time I start getting really tired of winter. January and February are probably the two most mediocre months out of the year if you ask me. The holidays are over, discarded pine trees line the sidewalks—simply thrown away like yesterday's news, and it's always cold cold cold. Every year I toy with the idea of moving back to Texas, and as fleeting as those thoughts are, I do miss the 40 degree "winters" we had there.

April, on the other hand, is a month I like. April marks the beginning of a cascade of happy events. Game of Thrones comes back (!!!), wonderful items such as garlic scapes and squash blossoms hit the market, the sun will still be out when I leave work, and I can buy peonies without paying $15 a stem. But until then, I might as well make use of the ridiculous amounts of root and cruciferous vegetables that beg their way into my shopping cart. I've already made these beet burgers twice this month, I've made cauliflower pasta every single week for the past six weeks, and of course I couldn't go without making a carrot cake...or two...or three. I've been going absolutely cuckoo for old ass (some would say "vintage") bundt pans, and it would have been irresponsible of me to not test them all.

Fig & Honey Panna Cotta

My parents used to have fig trees in their backyard. Though my dad currently designs software and my mom is a registered nurse, their backgrounds were originally in agricultural science. They have an enviable garden which grows everything from peppers to eggplants to squash to amaranth. Unfortunately the said fig trees were not as successful as some of the other plants. They were actually more like saplings which my dad was trying to grow into full-fledge trees; they didn't make it through the hot Texas summers and frequent droughts. Even in the few seasons they did produce fruit, my parents rarely got the opportunity to eat the figs they had worked so hard for as the birds would inevitably get to them first.