Super Simple Spring Salad

Hopefully the warm weather is on its way. We’ve had a few tantalizing tastes, and now it has at least warmed up enough for us to fit in some long neighbourhood walks in the morning. 

Spring produce is showing up also. Heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers (greenhouse grown), spinach and mushrooms are all I needed to put together this tasty plate. 

For the dressing, for two: in a blender jar, combine 1/4c or 60ml vinegar (I used homemade but wine or cider types are lovely), 2T or 15ml extra virgin olive oil, 2t or 10ml Dijon and 2oz or 60g of feta. Blend until smooth and enjoy.

Then maybe another walk to run a few errands…

Pudding for breakfast!

Sometimes a sweet treat for breakfast hits the spot. This breakfast pudding, or smoothie bowl, in common parlance, is fast and delicious.

In a blender, combine two ripe bananas, a small avocado, 2 T (30 ml) good-quality cocoa, 1/2 c (125 ml) silken tofu, and 1/4 c (60 ml) unsweetened almond milk. Using ripe bananas gives lots of natural sweetness. 

Blend until smooth, and top with chopped walnuts and grated coconut. Pumpkin seeds would look and taste fabulous as well!

Serves two.

  

Tart and Tasty

Holiday weekends always result in us pulling out the old family recipes. But this one, slightly adapted, hardly needs a recipe. It’s easy to make and delicious. If you want some protein, eat it along with a handful of nuts. Great for breakfast, or as a side with lunch, or dessert. Grammy Gladys would never have used the blood oranges, and sometimes added a spoonful of sugar, but truly, you don’t need it.

Use one orange, one grapefruit, and one blood orange per person.

Cut off the peel – use for  something else if you like, or compost.

Cut the fruit into bite-sized pieces, removing white pith. You’ll probably need to dump some juice from the cutting board into the bowl during this process. No one said family recipes weren’t messy.

Stir in, at most, a tablespoon (15ml) of sugar or maple syrup, depending on how sweet you like your citrus.

We ate ours with some peanuts – a slice of almond butter or peanut butter toast is lovely as well.

No Toast? Try Rost(i)…

Not wanting to heat up the kitchen to make bread, potatoes were just the ticket for today’s breakfast. We’re keeping an eye on the Open Championship while we catch up on our reading.

To make this:   

We grated two potatoes and chopped some greens, green onions, and herbs from our garden. In a well seasoned or nonstick pan with just a touch of olive oil, we cooked them until they were getting golden. A flip (messy is okay) and we added an egg for each. Once more over easy, we served them with some avocado and tomato, and a sprinkle of smoked paprika. They were, in a word, the breakfast of Champions.

You Light up my Lunch…

  

Leftovers can be a great start to lunch, and using them up while they are top-of-mind is key to preventing them from becoming a science experiment at the back of your fridge. This is a salmon loaf from the classic Anne Lindsay cookbook, Lighthearted Everyday Cooking. Ours is an ancient dogeared copy, but it is still a wealth of easy, practical healthy recipes. 

We paired it with a slaw of grated carrot and shaved celery, dressed with a mix of equal parts Dijon, light mayo, and rice vinegar. 

You reap (and eat) what you sow…

Today we’re headed out to the plot to do some compost maintenance and give the gardens a general walk-around before some visitors arrive this afternoon. Our fuel for the endeavour consists of local harvest foods, some of our own, and some from others nearby.

We cooked a melange of veggies – potato, onion, celery, peppers, mushrooms in a tiny spoonful of bacon fat (vegetarians, canola oil is fine, or a nice herbed olive oil if you have one). When they were nearly tender enough for our taste, we broke in some fresh eggs, lidded the lot and let them poach until just softly done. This is our tasty result:

Off to a great start!

After an inspiring talk last night from the Shorefast Foundation’s Zita Cobb (thanks to the Community Foundation of NS) we were in a “change the world” mood when we got up. Our great start included 45 minutes of exercise (I admit I can feel Zita saying “get outside!”, or similar) and this breakfast…all local except the avocado. However, having heard that they successfully grew a melon on Fogo Island gives me hope that even that is possible.

What’s your great start today?

Delicious Steak and Mushroom Pie

Slice 1 strip loin steak into bite-sized pieces. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and dried mustard. Dredge in flour. In a heavy pan that is large enough to make the whole pie filling, brown it in olive oil. Remove to a plate and begin cooking the veg (you will be developing a brown crusty layer on the pan; don’t worry!) Use veg as you like, for us an onion, diced, a couple of stalks of celery, sliced, two minced cloves of garlic, and 3 or 4 c of sliced mushrooms were just right. We chopped in some garden herbs – sage, rosemary and thyme. When the veggies start to get a bit tender, deglaze the pan with some beer. We used Boxing Rock’s Crafty Jack. Add any remaining beer – about a cup was used in total.

Cover and simmer on low heat until it is thick and has a nice gravy. Remove from heat and make the crust…

For the crust,

Cut 3/4 c butter or shortening into 2c whole wheat flour. Sprinkle in enough water so it begins to cling together as you stir (4-6 T). Shape into two balls, one slightly smaller.

Roll out the larger ball for the bottom crust. Fill the pie, and top with the smaller crust, piercing the top to let out steam. Bake at 400 for about half an hour, until golden.

Gardening is hungry work!

Yesterday was an absolutely glorious day, and hearing that there was snow in Calgary yesterday, we are grateful for the mild temperature we experienced. It let us get the garden cleaned up, prepped, and some cool weather crops sown for our spring table.

Of course digging and weeding all this (and more) in a locale that is too rocky for a tiller is no mean feat!

This meant our salmon avocado tomato sandwiches were all the more welcome.

For two, mix gently and spread on multigrain bread:

1 diced avocado, sprinkled w 15ml/1T lemon juice
4 cherry tomatoes, quartered
1 can wild salmon, drained and mashed
30ml/2T light mayo

Enjoy!

Sweet Start to a Rainy Sunday

Before our recent holiday, we packaged up any fruit we couldn’t finish, and threw it in the freezer. These sweet dark cherries and apple slices came in handy when we wanted a warming breakfast for a gray, drizzly spring day. Brown sugar, rolled oats and butter formed the crisp topping, spiced up with a shake of cinnamon. The addition of some tangy, fat-free yogurt made it just right.

For two:

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a heatproof glass dish, put 3 cups of fruit. Meanwhile, in a bowl, mix 2c/500ml large-flake oats, 3T/45ml brown sugar, and 1/4c/6oml melted butter with a shake of cinnamon. Pour this on top of the fruit and bake – 30 minutes if you use fresh fruit, or 45 if you use frozen, as we did.

Top each serving with 1/4c or 60ml of yogurt.