Learning to Love Foods I Hate

As a self-proclaimed foodie, I feel an obligation to like everything.  A foodie can't be picky, right?  But sadly, there are some foods I just can't stand.  Olive, pickles, and really strong blue cheeses top the lists of foods that I keep trying and keep hating.  And then there are those foods - mainly veggies - that I am convinced I don't like, even though I haven't tried them in years.  Hence this weeks project: learning to like (or at least tolerate) a food that has made me cringe since I was a kid: tomatoes.

Lemon Pasta with Chard and Chives

The post's title is somewhat misleading: this dish is packing tons of good stuff, and should probably be named "Creamy Lemon Spring Pasta with Chard, Chives, Shrimp, and Edammame"

Two main points of inspiration for this cheery/delicious/nutritious spring dish:

1. There is a literally a tugboat's worth of lovely green chard growing in the community garden across the street from our house, which I'll try to photograph when it's a sunny day.  So, I've decided to use bundles of it regularly before it goes to waste (or the squirrels).

2. I recently discovered that one can make a classic French béchamel (white creamy basic sauce) with SKIM milk instead of the usual whole milk, and it works just fine.  Hurrah!!!  This discovery is super-appealing to me because creamy white sauce feels like a luxurious and rich indulgence, but who wants all the fat, calories, and heavy feeling from a sauce that's essentially one step down from a full-on cream sauce?  Skim milk-based béchamel provides the best of both worlds: you get a creamy, luscious sauce for a fraction of the fat that's in classic béchamel or cream-based sauces.  And, while plain béchamel itself doesn't have a lot of flavor, it's a welcoming canvas for almost any flavor profiles you can dream up: roasted garlic, white wine and thyme, goat cheese and rosemary, or in the recipe at hand--lemon and spring chive.  Deeee-lish.

--K, quite excited about the "light béchamel" discovery