Did you know that vinegar can keep cauliflower snow white and broccoli as green as grass?

I have a secret to share with you all. Most of the time, when I'm just cooking for myself (but want something more than just a bowl of cereal), I recreate the foods I grew up eating (there was a lot of salmon/chicken/turkey burgers paired with broccoli/string beans/zucchini in my childhoo). I don't branch out or try new recipes. I steam a veggie and quickly bake/broil/ saute a piece of protein and I call it a meal.

Last night was the perfect example. I had just enough cooking energy to defrost some frozen salmon (from Trader Joe's and of decidedly unknown age), bake it with a little butter and lemon and steam a head of broccoli. It wasn't ground breaking or exciting, but it was tasty and filling. When it was done, I sat down at the table, taking my first sustained computer break in at least four hours and ate. It was quiet, simple and really restorative. Oh, and yummy. Because what's the fun in eating if it doesn't taste good!

According to conventional wisdom mothers have fought to get their little ones to eat veggies since before the earth was cooling. Cruciferous varieties, like broccoli and Brussels sprouts are often cited as particularly challenging.

Last week at my nephew's tenth birthday party, I was reminded of his surprising appetite for a particular green. It's not broccoli, kale, spinach, or even broccoli rabe, my Sicilian father's favorite. I don't know where the little guy stands on those. The object of his appetite isn't even a vegetable. It's an herb. He goes gaga for fresh parsley.

What reminded me of his parsley passion, was the birthday present his Aunt Dawn gave him: two fresh bunches of parsley. Ever since he had it in a salad his grandmother made for him when he was six he's been a parsley fanatic. Besides wanting to make her nephew happy, one of the reasons for Aunt Dawn's gift is that he once ate the better part of her parsley patch before anyone noticed.

By now you're probably wondering why this kid likes to eat what many regard as mere garnish.Taking a break from his hectic Lego-building schedule he provided me with the following quote: "I like it because it doesn't have much of a taste. How can you dislike something that has no taste. And it's healthy."

As for me, I was never into fresh parsley as a kid. I was too involved with my own food quirks, like slicing a notch in apple and stuffing it with a slice of bologna.

For most of yesterday, it was sort of chilly and overcast in Philly (it got sunny and warm in the late afternoon). The cool breeze that came through my window all morning made me thinking longingly of fall and want to put on a sweater. It also inspired me to make soup. However, since it is still summer, I wanted something that wasn't long-simmering or heavy. So I flipped to a soup that my mom made a lot when I was growing up, although back in those days, I always turned my nose up at it. These days, I can't get enough of it, especially when I had a weekend that was chock full off barbecue, desserts and beer.

Every single month of the year has a "National _______ Month" designation. Heck, I think every day has celebrates something. June has a few celebrations, and National Fruit and Vegetable Month is one of them.

Of course, you should eat a lot of fruit and vegetables all year round, but if one month can get you going, then it's a good thing. June is usually the month when I start to eat more salads and apples and oranges anyway, as I'm sure it is with a lot of people, so it's good timing.

Here's more info and tips about the month, along with links to other sites about healthy eating. And if you insist on eating a whole pizza tonight, at least put some mushrooms and onions on it.

It's not unusual to put vegetables, things we normally consider savory, into sweets. We have carrots in carrot cake, zucchini in zucchini bread and muffins, and obviously we have broccoli in broccoli cake.

Wait. What?

I have to say, it has never occurred to me to ever make or eat broccoli cake. However, blog Chic City Rats came across this broccoli cake, perfectly sliced to show off the florets inside, at Rose Bakery in the Parisian rue des Martyrs. Unfortunately, there is no additional information about the cake itself, but just the idea might get our culinary creative juices flowing.

• There's no boredom with mushroom ragout.
• What it means to be a young farmer in the 21st century.
• My mom used to make boiled dinner for herself all the time, but not with corned beef (ugh).
• There are currently over 300 restaurants in the U.S. certified as green.
• The Globe taste tests breakfast bars.
• Cauliflower is usually called broccoli in Rome?!
• What are your favorite budget wines?
• This week's recipes: Easy Alphabet Soup, Pasta with Cauliflower, and Raisin Soda Bread,

One of my favorite items to order from an Asian restaurant is General Tso's Chicken. If you've never had it, the chicken pieces are battered and fried, then covered in a sauce that is both sweet and spicy. You'll probably find that most recipes call for thigh meat, but I personally use chicken breast - really, it's your call. Either way, make sure the chicken is boneless, and any skin or fat has been trimmed off.

I've found this dish is generally served with broccoli, though I made it with a mix of vegetables as you can see in the image above. Regardless of the vegetable you choose, served it over a bed of rice. You can find the full recipe after the jump.

On nights when you don't really feel like cooking, pasta is always an easy fallback. Now that people seem to be less terrified of having a few carbs in their diets, pasta is slowly returning to its position as a pantry staple. It only takes a few minutes to cook and you can make an infinite number of sauces, from 5-minute light tomato sauces to rich, slow-cooked ones. If you have an extra few minutes in your evening, it doesn't take too much more work to turn a regular bowl of pasta into a comforting baked pasta dish, with an oozy topping of cheese than gets browned and ever so slightly crusty on top. Just about any baked pasta dish is a welcome meal on a cold winter day.

It looks like the news is already out that vegetarians are smarter than the average omnivore because those with higher IQs are more likely to choose to follow the lifestyle. But will switching to a vegetarian diet improve your IQ, as well? This seems unlikely, but if all it takes is gradually increasing your vegetable intake (since some of the "vegetarians" in the study still ate meat), it could be worth a try. Not content to wait for gradual results, it looks like one person took matters into his own hands. He (or she) stole a refrigerated semi-truck filled with $50,000 worth of broccoli. The trucking company seems to think that the truck itself - and not the broccoli - might have been the target for the theft, but if this turns into a trend and trucks full of spinach, squash and other veggies turn up missing, maybe the IQ-theory won't seem so far fetched.

A woman in the UK who claims to have "been terrified of vegetables for more than 40 years" is now saying that she is on the path to curing her fear. The fear, known as lachanophobia, had been with 61-year old Krissie Palmer-Howarth since she was just 17. Since its onset, she says that she has not been capable of smelling vegetables or even speaking their names aloud without feeling sick. After a session of hypnotherapy, she can now stand near them without incident.

This treatment could be applied to others with food phobias, or even to picky eaters. Children aren't eating their broccoli? Stop by the hypnotherapy clinic on the way home from school.

And perhaps a similar treatment could help the poor people we saw earlier this year, whose fear of mustard and pickles was ruining their lives. Maury would probably air it as a followup episode, though it's hard to imagine more captivating TV than the original.

These days, just about every organization has a fundraising event centered around food, but it all started with the Pancake Breakfast. The Seattle Times offers four recipes: Swedish Pancakes, Dutch Pancakes, Buttermilk Pancakes, and Blueberry Pancakes.

Two books are under review this week. A recipe for Slow-roasted Martini Shortribs comes from Kathy Casey's Northwest Table, and a quick review of Barbara Fairchild's behemoth The Bon Appetit Cookbook.

At the farmers' markets, broccoli rabe (rapini) is coming into season, and you can make a Rapini Frittata with Mozzarella.

Age related macular degeneration, or AMD, is associated with the eye's inability to remove anti-oxidants. There are two forms of AMD: the wet and the dry. The dry form accounts for about %90 of cases and is slow in progressing. It is what leads to the "cloudy" look in an eye with AMD, the culprit being the deposition of drusen around the retina.

Broccoli contains sulforaphane, an isothiocynate, that has been shown to modify the way in which some carcinogens are metabolized. According to Medical Food News, sulpforaphane (found in broccoli) actually stimulates the body's internal anti-oxidant system. Studies have been limited to the lab, but are promising with regards to retinal tissue and the removal of anti-oxidants. The thrust of the studies has been aimed at the elderly, who suffer most often from AMD.

So, the next time you hear a grand-mother tell the kids to load up on broccoli, remind her to do the same. It's easy to cook, and versatile. And we knew it was good for us all along. Next, the cauliflower.

One of the reasons that nutritionists often recommend that you write down everything you eat is that people tend to underestimate how much they're consuming. Those extra calories, whether 10 or 100 per day, can add up over time if your physical activity levels don't change much. And, unfortunately, those 10 calories can be made up by as something as small as a few grapes and translate into a weight gain of about 1 pound per year. To avoid this, try to be honest about how much you eat and pay attention to what you're eating, even when it's "just one" of something. To give you can idea of how many calories those "ones" can have, here are a few from the Seattle Times:

• One Pringles potato chip - 10 cal
• One McDonald's french fry - 5 cal
• One grape tomato - 1 cal
• One green seedless grape - 4 cal
• One M&M - 4.3 cal
• One Jelly Belly - 4 cal
• One broccoli floret - 0.8 cal
• One baby carrot - 1.25 cal
• One cashew - 8.5 cal

Tina Cosby got quite a surprise when she took the broccoli she bought the day before at Tesco out of her refrigerator. Nestled amid the florets was a footlong snake.

Cosby, who has a fear of spiders, was hysterical when she saw the European smooth snake. While the snakes are not poisonous, she's lucky it was only a baby. They're known to grow up to three feet long. Tesco has apologized to the family, and has assurances from its suppliers in Spain that this will not happen again.