I have to admit, I wasn't much of a salad eater before I started farming. Then, one day I discovered that 1) fresh greens grown with care and attention taste significantly better than store bought; 2) that I can add just about anything I can dream up to make them more interesting(see Spring Salad Post); and 3) I love to make my own dressings.
Lately, David and I have been mixing our lettuces from the garden with all kinds of ingredients from the farmers market or grocery store. I've started calling them the Love Salads, because *&#%, I love them! We'll be providing some of the ingredients found below in our future CSA boxes. In the not too distant future, in fact.
What's in The Love Salad
Giving you exact proportions of the following ingredients would take some of the fun out of it, unless you hate experimenting. When it comes to the dressings, I'll give you some guidelines, the ingredient list and then encourage you to do the dip test(dipping your finger in to see if it works for you). If you're not into experimenting with this, I'm sure someone's written a recipe online somewhere you can try.
- mixed greens, cabbage, snow peas, carrots, red onion or shallot tops, fennel, avocado, fat free feta, pine nuts or cashews, flax seed meal and orange vinegarette or honey-mustard-thyme dressing. And my new favorite addition, a friend egg, yolk still runny, over the top! This was an adventure for me last week after my friend, Heather recommended it. I never would have thought of it myself!
In a jam jar or cup, mix:
Zest of one orange...I'm careful not to grate the white, bitter part found underneath
Juice of the same orange...I like to use tangelos, blood oranges or valencia when available
Virgin Olive Oil
Vinegar...rice wine, pear-ginger infused or cider, although I imagine that balsamic could be good, too.
Salt, pepper
Tumeric if I'm feeling saucey
Toss it with the salad.
David's Honey Mustard and Thyme Dressing
Yellow or Brown Mustard
Honey
Virgin Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper
Sprig of Thyme...my suggestion is go easy on the thyme