I really love soba noodles. It all started with the recipe for Otsu in Super Natural Cooking, and grew from there into a mild obsession. I pretty much insist on eating them at least once a week, and I love the way they provide a pleasantly earthy backdrop for a huge range of flavors and textures.
Here, I added some red cabbage, sliced carrots, sauteed portobellos, blanched broccoli, avocado and fried tofu and tossed it all with a very simple miso and sesame oil dressing. Delicious!
In other news, we’re giving the state tests this week at school. I could rant for DAYS about my feelings on testing (and public education in general), but this is not the time or place. Instead, I’ll just say that no matter what our scores are, my kids this year have completely blown me away. I have students from Burma and the Philippines who’ve been in this country for just a couple years but can write a lab report with precise details and thoughtful conclusions. I have a student who asks the most awesome and insightful questions every single day. I have fantastic models of organic compounds built by the kids. I have their work all over my walls and I hear their thoughtful discussions every single day, and THAT is what shows how amazing they are , NOT a pick-the-best-answer-and-fill-in-the-bubble test.
I’ve been turning to kitchen therapy a lot this week. Not because work is stressing me out, but because I’m hardly running so I need somewhere to focus my energy. I bought some caperberries at the grocery store last week because I’d never seen them before and was curious.
They taste like a cross between a green olive and a caper (two flavors I love), but they have weird little grainy seeds inside so I think I’ll stick with either olives OR capers from now on. I did use them to make a pasta dish with roasted cauliflower, though, and THAT was pretty good.
Happy Friday!
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Cate's World Kitchen 
I’ve been loving soba and udon noodles lately, for which I entirely blame you 🙂 This looks like it would be great to make a big batch and then take it for lunches. I love colorful dishes, and this definitely fits the bill. Good luck with Big Sur this weekend!
It’s SO good for lunch – I’ve had it 2 days in a row!
Ugh…testing. Awful. Seriously awful. We know teaching kids to think at and produce results at the highest orders of thinking. We bend over backward to get them to do it. Yet we’re told we suck at our job because the kids don’t fill in the right bubbles. Nice.
I haven’t had soba noodles in ages.