Walk Widely. Eat Wisely. Live Gratefully.
310 calories per serving
Serves two
Divide 1 litre spinach leaves between two plates. Slice two large mushrooms on top.
Mix in a bowl:
15ml each Dijon, light mayo, salsa and fat free plain yogurt
Stir in 1 diced avocado and 180g diced turkey breast.
Put the turkey salad on the bed of spinach and mushrooms, and top with 1/2 bell pepper, diced.
Enjoy!
We spent a chilly morning remembering the Halifax Explosion and firefighters at the Line of Duty ceremony this morning. Traditions help us remember where we’ve come from and appreciate where we are going.
Food is another way we connect to our world – today we are having a smorgasbord of flavours – some old, some new. Delicious French cheeses – Tomme and Reblechon – from our friends at Ratinaud, along with a rabbit rilette. They’re an example of the wonderful community that has grown up in Halifax’s North End since the disaster, showing the resilience of community.
Olives, and some homemade Lebanese pickled turnip added tang and zip. We added apples and grapes for freshness. Homemade rye bread, creamy mashed turnip, and leftover beet risotto for warmth (and because we are above all, frugal).
So beyond being grateful for delicious food, we are grateful to be sitting in our warm house, and not shivering in the cold like our predecessors 97 years ago, when the world’s largest pre-nuclear explosion had rocked Halifax. Thousands were killed and rendered homeless. We are truly grateful, and we will always remember.
We were craving something delicious for lunch and there was an avocado that had just reached that moment of perfect ripeness. We diced it into some salmon and mayo, and served it on homemade whole wheat sourdough bread. Delicious with a cold glass of milk!
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:
We’ve been traveling, attending a couple of family weddings and doing a little business along the way. It didn’t seem realistic to ask them to postpone their special events on account of our vegetable patch, so the consequences when we got home were, well, interesting…
First, beans were just nicely coming into bloom when we left. Which means Jack’s beanstalk had nothing on us when we arrived back. Beets are still growing, and we’ve already harvested potatoes. A few tomatoes were spared the post tropical storm blight that has attacked local crops.
All in all, we had the makings of a lovely salad (and roasted veg are in our future). The eggs, olives, and tuna are not our own, but the rest is absolutely home grown.
For two:
Cook 2 small red potatoes and 1 large golden beet (reserve the greens for the salad). Throw the beans in to blanch, just at the end of cooking.
Hard boil 2 eggs.
Chill all of this (we cooked ours at breakfast time).
Arrange the chopped greens on a plate. Top with the cooked, cooled veggies, some sliced tomato, olives, and good quality water packed tuna.
For the dressing, mix 1T/15ml each of Dijon, olive oil, and vinegar (your choice).
Enjoy!
Looking over recent posts was very revealing. So much breakfast! Perhaps it is because that is when there is time to write. Who knows? So today, once again, a report on the start of the day.
The chill is in the air, a harbinger of fall. Heather and thistles bloom in the garden. I don’t want to face autumn, but it will come, regardless. So we might as well do it with a full tummy. This morning’s egg features mushrooms, some chopped chard and tarragon from our garden, and a little cheddar cheese. The jam on the toast is local, too…made here at home.
This isn’t our only meal of the day, though. Tonight we’ll be joining our friends at Ratinaud for Les Saucisses en Folie. Real local charcuterie…you can’t get much better. Perhaps a reason to love the end of summer, after all. Unfortunately tickets are sold out. But you can taste their delicious wares at the Kitchen Table on some Friday or Saturday soon, and we are sure they will be worth the wait.
These veggies are as fresh as can be – harvested in our own garden and roasted within minutes of being picked.
Choose your own mix of veg and herbs. Chop into bite-sized pieces, toss with a little olive oil and wrap in a double layer of foil. Put this on your grill while it’s heating, turning occasionally. It’ll be done when your steak or pork chop is cooked. Not grilling meat? About 10 minutes (plus the preheating time) should do the trick.
So many good things are coming out of the garden this time of year…it makes all the cold, wet planting in spring worth it. Today we had a small grilled steak with a little chipotle spice and the remains of our crunchy potato salad from the weekend. Paired with a lovely mix of greens (mizuna, Simpson lettuce, romaine, and red leaf lettuce) topped with green onion and mushrooms, dressed in a balsamic Dijon vinaigrette, it truly was the taste of summer at its best.
…tastes like, “deliciousness”.
On the menu for today’s breakfast:
Whole wheat toast, homemade, with 5ml butter
1/2 sliced tomato
125ml or 1/2 cup each sliced mushrooms and diced bell pepper,
Cooked in a nonstick pan with
2ml or 1/2 t butter
Scramble a medium egg, add to the veg, and cook over low heat until almost firm.
Enjoy your day.
Some of you know that earlier this week we roasted a turkey, and have been benefitting from that delicious pre-cooked goodness at several meals. The night before last we made an adaptation of Jamie Oliver’s Singapore Noodles recipe. As recommended, we substituted what was called for, for what we had. With a plentiful veg garden and lots of turkey, it was quite a different dish, in the end. (At least we used the noodles!)
We halved the recipe but it was definitely still too much for two, so yesterday we had about 1 serving left. We considered just reheating with a salad, but at the Tantallon Farmers’ Market we had acquired some delicious-looking chorizo. From the garden we grabbed a golden beet (including greens), about half a cup of fresh sweet peas, and three small carrots. We cooked these up – dry browning the sausage then adding about 1/2 cup of water, and steaming the harder veg and sausage until the sausage were cooked through. We sliced the cooked sausage and tossed everything together with our leftovers…no waste, all taste.
