An Ode To Salads: A Visual Feast + Guide to Flavor

Making a salad can be a creative way to start playing in the kitchen because you can easily combine flavors, test your seasoning abilities and get to know the ingredients you enjoy — or better yet — the ones you don’t enjoy. There is nothing to burn, your likelihood of cutting yourself is pretty slim unless you’re not used to wielding a knife at all and you can fish in your pantry — or stock it up — to have a creative cooking playdate with yourself. My love affair with salads runs deep. I know, I know it’s strange, but it’s true. I’ve often heard people and, yes, even my friends, say “I hate salads.”

dinner, mediterranean, vegan, vegetarian, lunchtina corradoSeptember 25, 2025salad, fruit, vegetarianrecipes, healthy

Sunday Dinner: Pasta e Patate

We have encountered yet another Sunday at the senior center which means it’s macaroni time. Today’s meal of choice was the good old Neapolitan and childhood staple of pasta e patate, aka, pasta and potatoes. Yes, I spent the majority of my childhood eating double carbs because my grandmother made this weekly and, if I had it my way, I would have eaten it daily. Making this dish always brings up fond memories for my father, mother and brother — reminded of my grandmother’s overuse of red pepper and the way she would save the tiniest dish of leftovers and send it upstairs to our apartment for one of us kids to have as a leftover snack the following day.

dinner, mediterranean, vegan, vegetariantina corradoAugust 25, 2025pasta, potatoes

Summer Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce

When I was working at Lifetime Television, my first real job in the big city, the office building was across the street from a Food Emporium. As a kid from Brooklyn the Food Emporium was FANCYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. I only knew Waldbaums, Key Food and Shop Rite — and every fruit and vegetable stand in Bay Ridge and on Avenue U. But I loved to go into Food Emporium on my lunch break (it was 2003, mind you) and scope out the sushi section, among many other delights that were beautifully stacked and color coded in the refrigerated “to go” section. Everything was priced way above my pay grade, every thing but one item.

dinner, vegan, vegetarian, snack, lunchtina corradoAugust 7, 2025summer rolls, vegetables, peanut sauce, Asian

Roasted Eggplant Farro Salad

When I was preparing salmon for dinner last week, I wanted to make a side that would have veggies and fiber but wasn’t a typical salad with a lettuce base. I love making creative salads, but I hadn’t made a grain salad in quite some time. I think grain salads are the perfect hearty but light offering to spring eating and, so, my aunt and I agreed on farro. Farro is a wheat based grain that has a nutty texture. It can be substituted with barley in many recipes,

dinner, mediterranean, sides, vegan, vegetariantina corradoApril 21, 2025farro, grain salad, beans, chickpeas, herbs, eggplant

Imam Bayildi, Turkish Stuffed Eggplant

At a local Greek restaurant in Astoria, Queens, sitting in their hot steam table, prepared and ready to order, they had an eggplant dish called “Imam.” I would often order the stuffed eggplant when I went to the restaurant and on days where I was too tired to cook and, so, I’d pick it up as take-out fare. Imam is bathed in onions, tomatoes and herbs and, best of all, slick with oil. I’d often approach the steam table at the restaurant intent on ordering something different

dinner, lunch, vegetarian, vegan, mediterraneantina corradoApril 11, 2025eggplant, tomatoes, meatless, roasted vegetables

Tina To Table