Recipes Discovered

Berry Tossed Salad Recipe

I love to try new and unusual salad combinations, and this salad definitely qualifies as unusual. The salad is a combination of romaine, berries (I used blueberries), kiwi, feta cheese, and walnuts. The dressing is made by whisking together mayonnaise, sugar, vinegar, milk, poppy seeds, and raspberry preserves. The salad is a great balance of sweet, salty, soft, and crunchy and goes perfectly with the creamy dressing. Together, it makes a wonderful fresh salad that is perfect for summer!

Warm Dandelion Salad Recipe

I hesitate to call this dish a salad, but honestly, I don’t know how to classify it. When I was little, I remember my grandmother making hot dandelion. My mom and aunt used to search the yard in the spring to find baby dandelion leaves. My aunt to this day still picks her own dandelion and has continued the tradition of making hot dandelion. I believe it’s an Amish or a German Dutch dish, but the recipe my uses has been passed down for many generations. When I was young, I would never eat it, but as I got older, I tried it. Every year, I go through the same debate if I actually like it or not. It’s a difficult dish to classify. It’s sweet, but it’s also very sour, and salty, and bitter. Since I’m not home this year to give hot dandelion yet another try, I asked me aunt for the recipe to try making it myself. Florida unfortunately makes finding dandelion a bit of a challenge, but luckily, endive and chicory make excellent substitutes.>> Read more

Homemade Caesar Salad Recipe

For dinner last night, we had Tortellini with Marinara Sauce. I wanted a salad to go along with it and thought a Caesar salad would be good. I didn’t want to use eggs in the dressing though, so I had to quite a bit of searching to find a recipe. The one I found was simple to prepare since you just add everything to the blender. The ingredients were olive oil, lime juice, Dijon mustard, garlic powder, cumin, salt, pepper, chicken brother, Parmesan cheese, garlic, and anchovy paste. I wasn’t so sure about the anchovy paste, but I figured I was already cutting out the eggs, I might as well try the anchovy paste. I blended everything and gave it a taste. It was pretty bland. I added more of all the spices and it was still pretty bland. I added more cheese and more anchovy paste and it was still pretty bland. I thought maybe it needed to sit for awhile to develop it’s flavors, so I put it in dish and set it in the refrigerator.

In the meantime, I decided that Caesar Salad needs croutons. I cut up 2 thick slices of wheat bread, sprayed them with olive oil and then sprinkled them with garlic powder and salt. I gently tossed them around and put them in a 325 degree oven. After 5 minutes, I turned each one over and let them go for another 5 minutes before I took them out of the oven and let them cool a bit.

I tore romaine lettuce and put it in a bowl and topped it with Parmesan cheese and the croutons. Then I got the dressing out and gave it a taste. It was edible, but definitely not what I would consider good. I didn’t have a lot of flavor and it was very runny. Maybe I should have just used a recipe with the eggs. On the plus side, the croutons turned out great. They had a nice flavor and were crisp, but not too crunchy. At least I had that going for me.