Nopales (Cactus Paddles) Three Ways: Pickled, In Cheesy Quesadillas, & In Spicy Salsa Verde

Use one fruit or vegetable in three different ways - that's the theme of this month's Creative Cooking Crew challenge, hosted as always by the lovely Joan of Foodalogue and Lazaro of Lazaro Cooks.

This is both a deliciously intriguing and a perplexingly open-ended challenge. Any fruit. Any vegetable. Any three ways. To narrow down the endless choices, I decided I'd make three things that would form a part of one dish. The trick would be to manipulate one ingredient into three components with different, yet complementary, tastes and textures.

Stuff It! Focaccia Stuffed with Genoa Salami, Provolone, & Olives

The theme for the July Creative Cooking Crew Challenge, hosted as always by the lovely and talented Joan of Foodalogue and Lazaro of Lazaro Cooks, was simply this: stuff it. As cooking themes go, it doesn't get much more wide open than that.

And so, as you see, I went with bread, and I am so glad I did. It has been ages since I worked with yeasted dough, and I had nearly forgotten how much I love everything about the process: the punky smell of the yeast as it hits the warm water, the way the flour goes from silky to sticky as it gets wet, kneading the dough until it becomes a stretchy, soft, compliant whole, the puffed-up feel of the transformed dough before it's punched down ... it's a tactile, engaging, and meditative activity.

Herby Chicken Verde: A Summer Plateful of Green

Color. That is the theme of this month's Creative Cooking Crew challenge, hosted as always by the lovely and talented Joan of Foodalogue and Lazaro of Lazaro Cooks. That is, color, singular, not plural - as in, participants have been tasked with creating a dish featuring one and only one color as the primary focus.

I had big ideas. I wanted to make a moody and mysterious dish of all black or blood red, inspired by my preoccupation with the brilliant series Hannibal. (My dish, however, unlike Dr. Lecter's creations, would have contained absolutely no human.) Alas, a hectic travel schedule for the first part of June put the kibosh on my plans and so instead I opted for this cheerful green number, complete with a cutesy name: herby chicken verde. My dark Hannibal-inspired dish will just have to wait.

Spiked Strawberry Rhubarb Lemonade

Ah, summer picnics. Humidity, sunburn, flies, mosquitos, ants, warm beer, screaming children, and the threat of listeria in every mayonnaise-soaked bite. When it's a million degrees outside, I would really prefer to eat inside. There's only one way to get through these sweaty ordeals of Americana: drink.

And so this is why, when the theme of this month's Creative Cooking Crew challenge - hosted as ever by the lovely Joan of Foodalogue and Lazaro of Lazaro Cooks - turned out to be picnic foods, I knew that my "food" was going to be of the potent liquid variety.

Bravas Sauce & Leek Tortilla Pinchos, An Altogether Different Sort of BLT

This month's Creative Culinary Crew challenge, hosted as ever by the lovely and talented Joan of Foodalogue and Lazaro of Lazaro Cooks, was deceptively simple: Come up with a new version of the classic BLT sandwich. The catch? Participants were forbidden to use bacon, lettuce, or tomato to fulfill the BLT requirement.

Right, then. That's as easy as plugging in any old foodstuff that begins with a B, an L, and a T, yes? Ah, but there's the rub: such a random approach would not only (in my opinion) lead to an uninspired kitchen-sink mess of a sandwich (barnacles, liver, & turmeric, anyone?) it would result in a dish completely lacking in context.

Cashew Butter & Bacon Soup {Inspired by Goober Peas & African Groundnut Stews}

This month's Creative Cooking Crew Challenge - hosted as ever by the lovely and talented Joan of Foodalogue and Lazaro of Lazaro Cooks - centers around four key ingredients: green apples, bacon, nut butter, and vinegar.  Participants have been tasked with creating any dish they like, using as many or as few ingredients as they please, as long as it  incorporates some version of these four components.

For good or ill, I will cheerfully turn just about anything into soup, and this challenge has done nothing to discourage this propensity of mine. Here I took inspiration from a Southern American dish, goober pea soup, a peanut-based soup eaten by the Confederate Army during the Civil War.  The ancestor of this dish is of course West African groundnut, or peanut stew. Goober is an African word for peanut, an example of the indelible imprint that African ingredients and foods, via the slave trade, made on the cuisine of the American South.

Bangers & Mash-Up: A Meat and Potatoes Challenge

Nothing will shake me out of my blogging doldrums like a good old Creative Cooking Crew challenge. This month's challenge, hosted by the fab Lazaro of Lazaro Cooks! and the lovely Joan of Foodalogue,  was as wide open as it gets: We were tasked with creating a dish around the theme of "meat and potatoes."

So. Where to begin? Well, given that I have been on something of a British television kick lately (particularly BBC Sherlock, but as this is a food blog and not a fangirl's Tumblr I will spare you the details) I decided I would look to the traditional cuisine of the U.K. for ideas.

No-Egg Gnocchi with Roasted Garlic Cashew Nut "Cheese" {Vegan}

It's a new year, and the 5 Star Makeover group has undergone a transformation. We have a new logo and name:

As you can see, we're now the Creative Cooking Crew, helmed by Lazaro of Lazaro Cooks and Joan of Foodalogue. Rather than doing makeovers, our mission each month is to create original dishes inspired by a theme.

This month, the challenge was to create a vegan dish inspired by a meat or animal-product-heavy meal. I drew inspiration from one of my very favorite fattening things: gnocchi slathered with plenty of butter and Parmesan cheese.