Eggplant Dip has a great texture with a tangy, vinegary, seasoned taste that is mellowed with pita. I also like to smear the dip inside warm crepes for a different kind of presentation.

This recipe is pretty flexible. Broccoli, asparagus, or another vegetable will stand in nicely. Noodles could substitute for rice. Orange juice will cover for clementine. This is a great recipe to adapt to use your favorite ingredients, or at least the ones you have sitting in your fridge at the moment.

This isn’t a real teriyaki sauce, but it’s definitely inspired by one. Teriyaki sauce is one of those things that is really easy to make at home successfully, so if you’ve been going without or buying expensive bottles of the stuff, you can stop! It literally has three ingredients – soy sauce, sugar, and mirin – but you can obviously get creative with it if you like.

I added clementine zest and juice to my teriyaki sauce. I love the sweetness and the bright citrus note it adds. I think any citrus you have would work here, and you can even leave it out altogether: just substitute water for the juice and add a little more sugar if you like.

Winter is high season for clementines. If you haven’t already picked up one of those enticing wooden crates full of them at the supermarket, I encourage you to do so. They are sweet, seedless, easy to peel, and all-around amazing. You will finish the entire crate, I promise you. And if not, now you have a recipe to use some of them in.

If you like, add some sesame oil, or garlic, or ginger to the sauce. I love it how it is, and appreciate its simplicity, but this sauce can be used more as a base sauce you can embellish any which way you like.

Minestrone is an Italian soup which takes its name from “minestra” which refers to a hearty or chunky soup. There are probably as many different recipes for minestrone as there are people who cook it and every region of Italy has its traditional minestrone soup for which it is famous. However, all minestrone soups usually feature a tomato based broth (this could be thin or thick) with onion, celery, beans, seasonal vegetables and sometimes pasta or rice.

So minestrone is a soup that very easily adapts itself to what is available in one’s kitchen. And given the ingredients it accommodates, it makes for a nutritious and filling one-dish meal.

This recipe is adapted from Tarla Dalal’s The Complete Italian Cookbook. She says that this particular minestrone with pesto is from Milan. The pesto lends the minestrone a nutty flavour and can be made ahead, but add it just before you finish making the minestrone. This minestrone is best served as soon as it is made.

If you ever find that the rate of cleansing is too much for you, have a bowl of homemade vegetable soup and/or drop back a step in your diet and notice how it calms the process.

Inspired by my boss Norma and my Grandma ;)

If celery roots are not available then 3 stalks of chopped celery can be used.
Garlic – Chop off ends but you do not need to peel the whole garlic.

Swap out any of the veggies for what ever you like. Add potato for heavier dressing or replace grapes with honey or brown sugar for sweetening to your taste.