Happy First Day of Spring! Let's eat.

It's the First Day of Spring - our favorite day of the year YAY!

Let's eat.

Right? Because that's our favorite thing to do on this favorite day of the year YAY!

But we don't want to hog it all for ourselves, so we also share the love and get everyone eating, including all of the billions of tiny helpful soil creatures and bacteria and microorganisms that are going to help grow our food this spring, too.

We're givers like that.

But before I lose you to "But I thought we were talking food, here", let's quick talk about how to feed your soil.

Remember how I was all "Cut down your cover crops" and everything? Well, that was the first step in feeding your soil. So, good job. You're nearly done feeding the soil. Just a few things left to do before we can talk about feeding YOU and you can have your first homegrown salad of spring.

(YAY!)

Since your cover crop is all chopped down into salad sized pieces and all disappearing at an incredible rate in the spring sunshine (don't worry, I'm not going to tell you to go out to the garden with a dinner fork and ranch dressing), it's time to pour on some compost or other organic amendment (we like Gardner & Bloome's Harvest Supreme quite a lot), rake it out and water it in.

This is like setting the table for your soil's bacteria and helpful organisms, and they'll get right to work breaking that chopped cover crop down into rich soil that your spring and summer crops will love.

Our soil friends say, "YAY!" and also, "YUM"

Love so much that they'll grow huge and healthy and productive, which means that you'll have huge, healthy and productive harvests this summer. Which means more eating. Which means more YAY!

Now you say, "YAY!", because obviously.

And we're all about YAY!

Because it's the First Day of Spring, remember?

YAY!

So, let's eat then!

If you already have lettuce and spring greens started, here are our some of our favorite salads and dressings all fixed up and ready for you to dive into headlong in a frenzy of IT'S SPRING LET'S EAT!

If you don't already have spring greens going, may we recommend a container salad garden that's so easy to grow and also so good looking that you could even use it as a centerpiece at the table so that your dining companions can serve themselves for once?

Yes we can. Recommend it.

And you can have it in less than a month. Just a few weeks even - now that the light levels are rising by the day!

Yay!

Materials
A smallish wooden box like a wine crate
New potting soil
Lettuce seeds
Unsoftened water (softened water has salts in it - no good)

To make

1. Fill your box about halfway to the top with potting soil
2. Sprinkle your lettuce seeds across the surface
3. Place it in a sunny window (with a tray underneath to catch water) or outside in part shade to full sun. Water in and keep the soil mo-ist until the seeds germinate (a few days). 
4. Keep the soil mo-ist as the seeds grow
5. Harvest your lettuce once it has a few true leaves (anything after the second leaf is a true leaf) using scissors or by just pinching off the leaves with your fingers and leave a a leaf or two behind so that the plants will continue to produce new leaves (AKA salad) for you

YAY!, right?

Happy First Day of Salad...ahem...I mean, Spring!

Our favorite winter salad

I guess technically, this is a "slaw", but who really knows the difference between salad and slaw?

Not I.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the greens are cabbage rather than lettuce, but I'll tell you that it does NOT include mayo, which in my mind is what makes something slaw-like.

And I don't enjoy mayo in my salad. Just no.

But I do enjoy cabbage! And apples! And cilantro! And wouldn't you just know that it's winter in NorCal and we have these things in abundance all at the same time.

Handy, that.

Which is one reason that this recipe for our favorite winter salad, adapted from an old recipe out of Real Simple magazine, has made a lot of winter appearances over the last oh four years.

I think it's hit the table one night a week from November through April for the last four winters. And not just because we have cabbage coming out of our eye sockets, but because it's fabulous, fast and easy to make, and gives us something to tell our moms so that they can be proud of their kids.

"Look mom! I'm eating my roughage instead of, like, Cheetos or something!"

Yeah, I can hear their chests swelling with pride right now.

Anyway, for the fast, easy, tasty, chest-swellingly prideful favorite winter salad recipe, then...

Cabbage Apple Slaw

Recipe adapted from Real Simple

Our changes in bold

Print this recipe below with the PRINT button. Yeah. That's easy enough.

Ingredients

3 T extra virgin olive oil - the good stuff

3 T apple cider vinegar or champagne vinegar  

1 T local honey 

1 cabbage - Napa, green, savoy, red - whatever you have is fine, chopped small

1 sweet and tart apple - we like Pink Lady, sliced thin-ish

1 bunch of cilantro,  washed really well and chopped

1 small bunch of chives or green onions, chopped

Sea salt

Cracked pepper 

To make

In a large bowl, whisk the olive oil, vinegar, honey, salt and pepper into a frenzy or whatever you call "emulsified" in your house. 

Throw in your chopped cabbage, apple, cilantro and onion and toss well. Continue tossing every few minutes until all of the dressing has magically disappeared into the salad - sorry SLAW. 

If you have the time, let it sort of rest for about 15 minutes and then serve with whatever main dish you have going or just eat it by itself and then call your mom to tell her that you ate one of the healthiest vegetables for dinner in great quantity and she can stop worrying that you've ruined your life with junk food. 

 

Mouth-spankingly good salad dressing

Sometimes I find myself with a giant pile of salad greens and very little inspiration. Like, I know I'm supposed to eat these greens - and furthermore I WANT to eat them - but then I get bored.

I mean, I could always just give them the old olive oil and vinegar treatment, but that gets old when you've been having salads with dinner every single night because your winter greens are exploding and so - I must dress it up. 

Thankfully we live in Northern California where winter also means citrus and we also spent a good amount of time in the summer and fall making pesto from all of the garden's basil, so a mouth-spankingly good salad dressing is only a whisk away.

That's right - a whisk away. I just made that up. I guess I'm getting cheeky around the holidays. Forgive me.

Make this dressing and then enjoy your mouth spanking.

Pesto Lemon Dressing

Ingredients
Juice from 1 Meyer lemon
1 T homemade pesto (or storebought - we don't judge)
3 T olive oil
1 T kosher salt
1 T fresh ground pepper
2 big handfuls arugula or whatever greens you have in the garden

To make
In a large bowl, whisk lemon juice, pesto, salt and pepper. When thoroughly blended, add olive oil one tablespoon at a time until completely blended.

Then toss in TO THE VERY SAME BOWL a couple big handfuls of freshly picked arugula or whatever greens you have on hand (mustard, fava leaves, spinach, beet greens, kale...) right from your garden and toss to coat.

We had a few tomatoes still sitting on the counter, so those went in, too.

That's it. Now go eat those greens.

Fava leaf salad

We really just grow fava beans for the fact that they fix nitrogen in the soil, so we don't even let them get to the delicious bean producing stage, but that doesn't mean we can't eat *something* that comes from these plants.

And that *something* is the leaves.

If you like the flavor of fava beans, you'll like the leaves.

Don't look at me like that - it's true. The leaves are good and they taste just like fava beans - just in leaf form.

Try it before you write me off as a nutter.

Just pluck a bunch of good looking leaves from your plants (just don't completely denude them), rinse them in cold water and then toss them with your favorite dressing (may I humbly suggest) and whatever other salad doin's you have lurking about your crisper.

Then just try and tell me that this isn't a fine, fine salad.

JUST TRY IT.

Or don't. Whatever.

Fava leaf salad

Broccoli noodle salad

Broccoli Noodle Salad

Recipe by moi

Ingredients

Broccoli, 1 head cut into florets

1 large carrot, shredded

1 handful of string beans, halved, tips removed (optional)

1 serving of rice vermicelli noodles

4 t fish sauce
2 T fresh lime juice
1 clove garlic, minced
2 T sugar
1/2 t garlic chili sauce

Noodle salad

Prepare vermicelli according to package directions and don't forget to rinse with cold water and set aside to drain well.

 

Steam broccoli, carrots and beans for 5-7 minutes or until tender crisp and not limp. Rinse in cold water and set aside.

Sauce
Whisk together fish sauce, lime juice, garlic, sugar and chili sauce in a large bowl. Then dump in noodles and steamed vegetables. Toss until noodles and vegs are completely coated with the sauce and allow to stand briefly for the flavors to get all mingley.

Eat with chopsticks if you're feeling exotic or with your feet if you're feeling grody yet coordinated.

Enjoy.

Asian coleslaw

I don't know about you guys, but I'm not a big fan of mayo. 

Sure, spread it LIGHTLY on some toasted bread for a tomato sandwich, but I'm not stirring a giant wad of it into the shredded beauty of fresh cabbage and carrots. 

I'm just not doing it.

But I do love coleslaw. If only because it's a really good way to use up a lot of beautiful cabbage.

This coleslaw recipe employs none of the mayo craziness that your typical coleslaw calls for and I find it to be an awesome accompaniment to Asian dishes of all kinds. Or just boring dishes that need a fancy sidekick to give it some direction.

You know, like frozen pot stickers from Trader Joe's. 

Seriously - I do that. There's no shame in frozen pot stickers, sorry GYOZA, from Trader Joe's.

Enjoy your mayo-free coleslaw.

Asian coleslaw

Ingredients

1/2 head green (or red! be wild like that!) cabbage, shredded

2 carrots, julienned

2 green onions, julienned

A few sprigs of cilantro

1 lime, juiced

4 T soy sauce

2 T sesame oil

Salt/pepper to your taste

 

In a medium sized bowl, whisk together soy sauce, sesame oil, lime juice, salt and pepper. Then throw in the cabbage, carrots, cilantro and onions. Toss it all together and set it aside.

 

This actually tastes best when it's been allowed to sit around and get tossed every once in a while. 

 

Just don't let it sit around too long. The cabbage will get limp and start to smell...strange. Give it about 10 minutes and then have at it.

 

Good eating. 

Citrus salad with goat cheese

Have you met mizuna? It's a frilly little salad green found often in Asian dishes. It also does well cooked into hot dishes.

If you have a tajine, you should become friends with mizuna as they play nice together.

Meanwhile, this is not a tajine recipe, nor an Asian recipe. Just something thrown together from the contents of the garden on a spring evening.

Citrus salad with goat cheese

Serves 2
Ingredients
Bunch of mizuna
2 oranges, peeled, cut into small wedges
1/4 cup of crumbled goat cheese
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil

To make:
Rinse the mizuna really well, making sure to knock off any remnant dirt from the farm. Trim off excess stalk at the end. Fill a couple bowls with the mizuna, add goat cheese and oranges, pour on a bit of olive oil, a bit of salt and a healthy grind of pepper.

I like a lot of pepper on this. It's good with the sweet oranges and smoky goat cheese. 

Happy feasting.

Too Big Coleslaw

Sometimes when I'm making dinner (or breakfast or lunch), I get lazy. Also, afraid.

In the case of coleslaw, I'm always faced with a fearful question:

Use the mandoline to shred the cabbage or chop it by hand or otherwise?

I'll tell you how many times the mandoline was the answer - once.

And then when I realized how close my limbs came to being sheared off by its unforgiving blade (despite the food stabber attachment that comes with it to "guide" the food through the blades and allegedly save your fingers), I retired it to the garage forever.

It's just too scary.

So, when faced with a shredding task, I'll either take to the knives or I'll haul out the food processor.

In the case of this coleslaw, I went for the knives and ended up with a sort of Too Big element to the cabbage.

I, personally, liked it because I got more of a cabbage flavor out of the coleslaw, but not everyone's going to feel that way. Some people like it to be shredded finer so that the coleslaw has a more scoopable way about it.

I'll let you sort that out though, depending on how death-defying you are in your kitchen tasks.

 Too Big Coleslaw

Ingredients
1/4 head of red cabbage, chopped wide
1/4 head of green cabbage, chopped wide
1 carrot, sliced wide
1/2 c cider vinegar
1 T celery seed
2 T mayo
1 T sugar
1/2 T fresh ground black pepper

To make:

Mix this whole mess in a big bowl and let it sit for about 10 minutes while you get forks and drinks and things. Serve it up alongside some pulled pork tacos and feel free to jam some in the tortilla. It's best that way. And then you also don't mind the Too Bigness.