Winter is the height of the season in Southern California for many of the greens we all love.

Kale, Spinach, Rapini, Chard, Mustard, Pea Tendrils. You see them this time of year at the market. They are so beautiful, like masterful Baroque still-life paintings of the Dutch Golden Age.  The intensity of detail of these greens can almost be off putting. Intricate shapes, complex gradations of color; thick, lush and vibrant. Cooking with them just makes you feel like an artist.

But if you are able to look past all the variations of green greens, you might notice another type of green entirely. And that green is RED!

You may be familiar with Red Leaf Lettuce. It’s a pretty alternative to the Green Leaf Lettuce you find in your local supermarket. Aside from its striking red blush, it tastes fairly similar to its more common green brother. Though, I swear it gets all black and slimy much quicker than the green guy.

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.

I finally did it. I broke the spell and actually cooked. I don't mean reheated, or cold poached or relied on default memories of pastas long loved. I mean sat down, thought it out and created a completely original recipe using all of my faculties.

I had my synapses working in both directions. And we all know that synapses are essential to neuronal function, and without neuronal function there would be no such thing as really good cooking. Because neurons are specialized cells that pass signals to individual target cells. And neurons use synapses as the means by which they pass along pertinent information.

Information such as: "Gosh these pork loin chops look fabulous". And because the neurons I was using to view those loin chops at the meat counter this morning were able to share that information with other neurons in my brain the inkling of a recipe was born.

And I want you to know that without synapses the information I gleened by staring at those beautifull loin chops would have just sat in the receiving neuron never actually meeting its destiny. And in this case the destiny of that information may have started with a mere visual cue, but that cue was able to travel back and forth between neurons, telling my body what actions to take to transform those fabulous pork loins into the luscious, delicious, (if I say so myself) recipe that required all my cognitive skills to bring to you today! I think I even spelled it all correctly...

Today I have soup. Or do I have stew? A Spiced Chickpea Stew with Feta Toasts

STEW : (formal) To undergo cooking by boiling slowly or simmering, especially a mixture of meat or fish and vegetables with stock.

(slang) To be in a state of anxiety or agitation

SOUP: (formal) A liquid food prepared from meat, fish, or vegetable stock combined with various other ingredients and often containing solid pieces.

(slang) A chaotic or unfortunate situation.

I don’t know whether to categorize this as a soup or a stew. Which has got me in a ”state of anxiety or agitation” leading to a “chaotic or unfortunate situation.

The Martha Stewart recipe that inspired me was solidly in the soup category. I say that because she called it soup. Flat out, no hemming and hawing. Soup period. Soup!

My version uses the same great flavors, chickpeas, tomatoes, coriander and red pepper. But I have let it cook a lot longer and I have left it a lot chunkier, so I tend to want to call it a stew. But these definitions above make no distinctions concerning texture. Conundrum.

Egg in the Basket, Toad in the Hole… Pig in a Whistle. I can’t quite remember what I am supposed to call this dish. That’s because I have a bad cold. I don’t even feel well enough to google the name.

So you can pick any one of those names or make up one of your own, then berate me in the comment section later. Besides today might be your lucky day. I am feeling so low energy I might even go ahead and publish it with out editing it… but probably not.

If you don’t mind, I think I’ll call this dish by its French name Oeufs en Croustade. It was a good enough name for Julia Child and it’s good enough for me. Besides, I don’t feel well and French is my comfort language. Yes I may be American, but I sometimes slip into French when I am feverish. I can’t explain it. Que signifie-t-ceci ? Suis-j'insensé?

So when I am feeling this way, the truth is– I just don't care what your Aunt Polly called this dish. And I certainly am not cutting the hole into the shape of a heart or a star. Because contrary to what Aunt Polly said, cute shapes will not make me heal faster. Just ask your uncle Walter…

Maintenant me pardonner j'ai un oeuf pour manger.

Sometimes you just don’t need a recipe to know what your body craves. This is one of those days, because I have a bad cold. One of those I don’t want to do anything at all kind of colds.

I have been battling it for 5 days. It started typically enough with a scratchy throat. By the next day I had a stuffy nose, but no fever. In fact if it weren’t for the stuffy nose I would have said I felt just fine. I had just about convinced myself that it was not a cold at all, just a mild allergy flair up.

But, alas sometime in the night these sniffles moved into my chest and sat down with a great heavy thud!  My chest is so congested that it actually feels as if a great big bear is sitting on it while sticking a long feather down my throat. Tickling away for his own amusement. The tickle leads to a cough, the cough leads to hack and the hack brings up some of the nastiest stuff you’d ever want to see.

The only way to calm the tickle and stop the process is to drink warm tea. And I mean constantly. But a man’s gotta eat too. So it’s toast for me. Tea and toast with a little butter and honey for comfort.

Nature’s Pride sent me a couple of loaves of bread recently asking me to try their new product. Free bread – what’s not to like!

But seriously, I thought I’d put this bread through the paces. So I made sandwiches. Good sliced bread absolutely must do well with sandwiches. It’s 90% of its duty at my house.

I am pleased to report that it indeed made excellent sandwiches. The main reason for this fact was because it's not too sweet. Have you noticed that many of the grocery store brands of bread have gotten strangely sweet? It seems modern companies have crept up the processed sugar content in these breads slowly over time. As Americans began to turn to “healthier” whole grain sliced bread I think these companies doubled down on their bets by increasing the sugar content.