Roasted Sweet Potato and Pear Salad
We’ll its November. The air is chilly, it gets downright cold at night and in the morning our giant windows are frosted. We tricked and treated. We’ve set our clocks back and the skies darken now before six o’clock. Since our coats have become an essential part of our wardrobe I no longer feel guilty about powering up our oven and roasting vegetables for every meal, especially lunch.
Roasted Cauliflower and Celery Salad
“What IS that?” Asks oliver, pointing to my dark green stalks of celery. I can already see the little wheels in his head working on a plot to escape with a stalk or two to transform into a D-I-N-O. “That’s celery, it’s a very tasty vegetable,” I say.
“Is it FOOD?” he follows up. “It is,” I say. “Who eats that?” he continues, “Well, I like to eat it,” I say. “And who else?” he persists. “I think your Dad eats celery.” “And who else?” he persists. The answer he’s looking for is The Wonder Pets. The Wonder Pets eat celery. I could name a hundred people that eat celery, but all Oliver cares to know about celery is that it can be pet food. And I know he’s not alone in his under-appreciation of celery. It’s generally treated with indifference, used for stocks and a nice mirepoix, rarely is it set out on a pedestal and loved in its own right.
Pear Salad with Olives and Orange
I know what your thinking. Two salads in a row, it looks suspiciously like a trend. Lest you fear I’m getting boring, or this space is in danger of becoming a venue for raw green things only, I feel I must assure you that I’ve got a half dozen sweet treats in the works, pies and tarts and cookies. It is fall afterall! That means baking. And all this baking means one thing – salads for lunch.
Autumn Chard Salad
A few years ago I became obsessed with eating kale salads, lacinato kale salads to be precise. Nothing fancy, just kale, sliced thin, doused in meyer lemon juice and sprinkled with parmesan, maybe salt and pepper; later incarnations included fried almonds and sunflower seeds. I would pile it all in a big bowl, offer D a serving, which he would politely decline, and proceed to eat the entire bowl. Night and night, bite after bite, finishing always with an extra sweet and crunchy forkful, feeling completely satisfied and happy. All that lemon juice does a wonderful thing to your palate- it cleanses it.
Fattoush Salad
“I don’t ever want to take for granted that I live in a place with such great Lebanese food,” at the time it was a seemingly insignificant statement. It came from a friend during one of our regular gossipy lunches where we coached each other to be become better people. There were boys to dismiss, travels to hash out and dreams to realize. While much of the future was uncertain, it was a forgone conclusion that we wouldn’t be in that place forever, we’d grow up, we’d move on, our world was expanding. And months later we were indeed spreading out, to Columbus, DC, summer camp in Michigan. But six years later its the thought of savoring Toledo’s Lebanese food that has stuck with me wherever I go (and the friendship, thankfully).
Coconut Rice Salad
I started making any number of rice salads simply because Oliver likes eating rice, and it’s easy to make a big batch and pick at it all day long. I also recently decided our family was going to steer clear of plain white rice, so I started looking for ways to dress up brown rice, hoping Oliver wouldn’t notice. Of course he did, but he’s coming around. My true ulterior motive here is to make packing Oliver’s summer camp lunch easier. It turns out just about everything we eat is either a choking hazard or an allergen. (You’d love the notes Oliver comes home with, “grapes are not allowed as they are a choking hazard, also no popcorn. Also, you are a dimwit”)
Recent Fixes
