Sometimes I get into trouble with you my gentle readers because I don’t always do “wow” recipes. What I mean is– seared scallops can knock it out of the park and many people are cruising the blogs looking for those iconic images to satisfy their tastiest food fantasies. So in my heart, I know today’s Avocado Watercress Salad with Green Beans will surely be a disappointment for those of you looking for truly inspired, gastro-molecular–gravity-defying-stacks of food. But my wallet (and my blood sugar) can’t afford to enjoy these treats on a daily basis.

I also know that several of you nice folks are gonna leave me sweet messages saying how you think all my recipes are “wow”.  To those of you so inclined, I’ll say “Thank You” in advance for those kind words, but there’s really no need to pat my ego this way. Because, as much as I love bringing on the wow-factor every once and again, I honestly enjoy real food and real life here just as much as anything.

That is why Sippity Sup is often about fresh takes on the familiar. My recipes tend to be simple, modern and colorful, though they have their roots in traditional styles. I find myself attracted to presentations that highlight some aspect of cooking, or perhaps a particular flavor or an ingredient that I love. I am drawn to simple pairings of diverse flavors. I draw on other cultures, but I am a slave to none. I think we should eat healthy, but I prefer classic techniques using real ingredients. Including real fats. I think that a bold hand and a deft palate allow the simple beauty of food to shine. Sometimes what’s not in a recipe can be every bit as important as what is.

Carrots are a year 'round item at the Hollywood Farmers Market. But this time of year particularly beautiful carrots can be found in an array of colors, sizes and shapes. I love the little round French carrots; so sweet and carroty. They are the perfect size to pop in your mouth like a little carrot bon-bon, and that’s exactly what I do with them.

So this week I chose carrots for my Market Matters post. Not just any carrot however, I chose a variety of the most unusually colored carrots I could find. Because once you get out of the PigglyWiggly you will discover that there is way more to a carrot than orange. There are red carrots, purple ones, even yellow, white, and two-toned varieties.

You needn’t be frightened of these carrots. They are not some mutinized hybrid with a lot of genetic hanky-panky going on. Nope, most of these carrots are heirlooms.

The Brown Derby is perhaps the most well known of all the iconic restaurants of old Hollywood. Partly due to Lucille Ball and the famous scene between her and the actor William Holden in the I Love Lucy television series of the 1950s.

So, naturally when I am in Panama presenting recipes from classic Hollywood restaurants to Boquete Gourmet I want to include a recipe from this restaurant. It should be fairly easy for me too, because I own the old cookbook from Marjorie Child Husted, The Brown Derby Cookbook. But in flipping through this book I can see one thing right off the bat. Our styles in eating have changed drastically since the era of the Golden Age of Hollywood. It’s hard to imagine Brad Pitt or Halle Berry sitting down to some of the dishes featured in this book. The food is both fussy and simplistic if that’s possible. I mean many of the dishes call for pastry cream and elaborately turned (but grossed overcooked) vegetables. But they are simple in the fact that they are not much more creative than some sort of meat and potatoes presentation with a cream sauce.

The book is interesting from a historical perspective but I don’t really want to cook anything from this book.