almond butter is a food group, right?

It's really easy for me to fall into the rut of quesadillas for lunch. I come home from work, flick the burner under the comal to high heat and let it go for a minute while I put down my purse and get out the tortillas and cheese. I search the DVR for a cooking show or last night's "Daily Show," then turn the heat to medium and get the tortillas going.

If I have guacamole, this is a fairly awesome lunch. But that counts only technically as eating something green. As much as I like quesadillas – or Mexican pizzas, as Miguel's older sister called them when they were kids to trick him into eating them as an after-school snack – I soon start feeling like I should have had broccoli.

So when a Whole Foods email showed up just after I'd eaten a lunch of carbs + melted cheese and featured a recipe for broccoli salad with almond and chile dressing, I wrote down a grocery list and made it that night. Because I was cooking only for myself – and my logic didn't go much further than "Hey, at least it's not another quesadilla" – I didn't follow the recipe to the letter. Mung bean sprouts weren't available (because of a recent recall, an H-E-B stocker told me), so I tossed everything together with soba noodles. For me, it's hard to go wrong with any combo of nut butter, crisp vegetables and soba. I also let the broccoli marinate in the dressing for only about as long as it took to snap that photo up there. Who can marinate when there's eating to do?

Broccoli salad with almond and chile dressing

From wholefoodsmarket.com

Serves 6 to 8

1/2 cup almond butter
1 1/2 Tbsp. lemon juice
2 Tbsp. chopped pitted dates, raisins or prunes
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1/2 tsp. sea salt or 1 Tbsp. reduced-sodium tamari
1/2 small serrano pepper, finely chopped (optional)
1/3 cup water
2 heads broccoli, cut into florets and lightly steamed
1/3 cup chopped cilantro, plus more for garnish
1 1/2 cups mung bean sprouts

In a blender or food processor, purée almond butter, lemon juice, dates, ginger, garlic, salt, pepper and water until smooth. Transfer dressing to a large bowl, add broccoli and cilantro and toss well. Cover and marinate for up to 1 hour, if you like. (Or just include some cooked soba in the tossing step, skip the marinating and the following step and just grab a fork!) Arrange bean sprouts on a large platter, top with broccoli, garnish with cilantro and serve.