Cynthia's salad inspiration

CynthiaM's story of salad got me thinking of the upcoming growing season and some of the things we eat here only in that special time when fresh, local produce is available.

Baby potatoes boiled in just a touch of water with a glob of bacon grease and chopped chives! Oh yeah! (mom did it that way)

As Cynthia got my thinking about, spinach salads with orange slices, hard boiled eggs, sliced mushrooms and bacon bits.

Rhubard is my spring tonic plant and a rhubrab crisp, with or without apples, served with the BEST vanilla ice cream! This is a must have when the neighbours come over to play rummie or Whist. Or rhubarb muffins, butter and a cup of coffee shared with a friend! I LOVE my rhubarb plants!

But it's the local fresh asparagus that makes me giddy with glee. I love it steamed and served with butter. BUt if I'm really feeling special, I make a modified Greek salad...to DIE for!

Make your basic Greek onion / grn or red pepper / tomato / cucumber / feta. Now chop and cook and cool asparagus, toss that into the salad AND then some prawns you have cooked in butter, wine and garlic and cooled. Greek salad with asparagus and prawns...wine...crusty bread. I can hardly wait! What's YOUR favorite garden treasure and what is your favourite way to serve it?

Well, I'll bite, Uno!

There is not much fresh up here other than hay and wheat...but then that is dried.

I do love the first fresh tomatoes of summer. Tomato sandwiches on a slice of fresh rye with a generous dash of salt and pepper makes my mouth water!

The only other thing I get all psyched about are strawberries. I never buy the tasteless store berries but I like the ones in the garden, and the wild ones the size of your pinkie nail just are bursting with flavor. One afternoon I spent hours in the horse pasture to get two cups of those little suckers. What do you do with two cups? Fresh, homemade strawberry icecream!!!

Holy Dina Uno, that greek salad recipe nearly makes me want that rather then a cupcake....


A favorite of mine is definitely new potatoes, boiled with butter, chives, salt and pepper. Also peas, cooked, raw, fresh, frozen, doesn't matter how but home grown peas are the best. Home grown green beans sauteed with some olive oil, sundried tomato chopped into small pieces, and pine nuts thrown in at the end to just get a bit browned.. mm!
My grandma still has her own (massive) garden, and grandma's pickeled carrots are so yummy too.

We are now nearly free of grocery store meat, our pork comes from a local farm up island, beef from either our grandparents or another local friend who has beef. Turkey, chicken, you got it right here, and we also have a lot of vennison! There's nothing better then home grown meat.

This spring, my parents deboned and ground our huge turkey (it was too large to fit in our oven) and made home made turkey patties for breakfast, and another variety with apple and cranberries to bbq.

First home grown thing?

Young clean dandelion leaves, picked before the plant flowers, with dried figs and walnuts and a little balsamic vinegar.

Baby potatos, stolen from the plants, wrapped in foil with fresh garlic, butter, chives, salt and pepper and put in the oven until tender.

Asparagas any way I can get it. I even like it just blanched, drizzled with fresh lemon juice and put in a salad.

Yum, yum, yum.....you are all making me hungry and it is to late to eat now!

Roasted french fingerlings with butter and salt and pepper........a beautiful fresh garden salad with 3 different kinds of lettuce, thinly sliced sweet onion, fresh dill and borage flowers with our favourite home made dressing.

And for lunch in the late Summer/early Fall - steamed corn on the cob from the garden with butter and thickly sliced large tomatoes with salt and pepper. Simple but sooooo satisfying.

Fabulous! Bring it on everyone!

OOh, please share your home made dressing! I'm trying to replace prepared, over processed foods with wholesome home made food. (Disregard my thread re: chocolate cupcakes when you read this reply).

Oh myorka Uno, what have you done? At first thought I was in trouble, smiling.

The early garden delights, so many come to mind as I enter my second year of gardening in my new life, new things to learn about Mother Earth and how to help her to make me have the best of the best. Last year was the massive amending of soil, this year that has been set, I just need to add more. Alien gardens last year, the right amount of sun and moisture, thought I had gone to outer space, this year expect even better. I know the climate too, so know well that I can begin much earlier than I did last year, and yes, the garden beds are set with stone for retaining walls, a huge job last year, but ready this year for the soil work. Right. This was about the first freshness and ongoing freshness of the bounty of the land.

Right now we are eating the first, and that is the chives that are poking their beautiful green heads above the soil, already gracing our dinner table. The garlic will soon be springing out too, and those thousands of little bulbils I set to wind, for green gathering, will soon be seen too. Soon I will set a few things, like potatoes, carrots, beets, and spinach. Those will be the first, the ground has thawed and these earlier get-goers can go in. Cool weather lovers (except carrots, which swing both ways, heat and coolness, well, potatoes too).

Those early potatoes, gently boiled, a little butter, garlic greens and dill, fresh dill that will never need to be planted again, Mother Nature has done her job with setting seed everywhere, and of course chives, in everything. Clumps everywhere here too.

Swiss chard, the glory of the chard. Nearly an every day dinner item, sauteed in its own moisture, gently, barely wilted and served with lemon, butter, or vinegar and butter, my mouth watering.

Beets, boiled, then served every which way but loose!! Young, beautiful teeny tiny beets. A Harvard sauce is a must for now and then, sweet and sour baby beets. And the greens, again, sauteed in their own moisture, butter and vinegar or lemon juice.

Salads upon salads upon salads, always with lots of nuts, and of course, nearly every day, a hard boiled egg sliced on any salad. could make meals of these salads.

The zucchini. Zucchini cut into rounds, sauteed lightly in butter, parmaesan cheese on top. Tomatoes, picked off the vine, with the little salt shaker I have in the gazebo for this, and the little garden knife to help me to cut it in my hand. And yes, those tomato sandwhiches, toasted, with Miracle Whip, chives, either garlic chives or green chives...now mouth watering at 5:00 in the morning, silly girl.

I can't wait to try some baby dandelion leaf salad, lots of those around here, beautiful. What a lovely thread, Uno, I am more of a reader with this than a speaker, so bring on your favourite summer time garden delights, we are all listening. Beautiful days, CynthiaM.

BriarwoodPoultry wrote:OOh, please share your home made dressing! I'm trying to replace prepared, over processed foods with wholesome home made food. (Disregard my thread re: chocolate cupcakes when you read this reply).

Oh Briar, everyone tells us we should patent this dressing. It is our staple. Always in the fridge and we never buy premade. Here is the recipe and I don't have measurements but if anyone wants them I can easily figure them out. We make it in a quart jar 3/4's full by the time we're done, so that will be my gage with the amounts.

Ex-virgin olive oil
Apple cider Vinegar (no substitutes cause you want that apple flavour)
Honey (more than you think and warmed, as it makes it easier to shake)
4'ish cloves of crushed garlic (more than you think)
Dill and Basil (about a TBSP of each)

Give it a good shake and then taste it. Make sure it's not too vinegary but that you can taste a tang. You should also be able to taste the subtle sweetness of the honey and also taste the garlic. It gets better after a day or two as the flavours release and meld together. Fabulous! Try it Briar. You'll love it and if you don't, it needs adjusting.

Mmmmmmm! Rhubarb! Thanks a lot, Uno! Now I'll be craving Rhubarb! Mmmmm! Rhubarb cake and muffins! Mmmmm! Stewed Rhubarb with pancakes... or toast! I can almost smell it now... If only it weren't still buried in snow...

Know what I love in the spring? I look forward to when the fireweed starts sprouting, and you can snap off the tender young tops when they first push out of the ground and snack on those.

Also fiddleheads. Yum...

I can't wait for the snow to go and things to start growing!

Oh fireweed, now that is amazing, if the green sprouts are as good as the honey my bees make during fireweed season, then it has gotta be just the best. Sure can tell when the nectar is flying high from fireweed (which is pretty much all summer, smiling). And oh such a beautiful plant. I wonder if the pretty pink flowers would make some nice tasting stuff, perhaps on my agenda to check out the taste of fireweed flowers. I remember as a child sucking the nectar out of the flowers of something my Mamma grew, think it was like nasturtiums maybe, so long ago.....

Oh meant to mention borage flowers!! Oh man, I tried those once, back in our old life on the coast -- heard that the pretty blue flowers would make lovely adornments for salads, but ich....tasted like fish oil to me, I was shocked. I know the tender young leaves of borage tastes like spinach if boiled. I know when the leaves are disturbed in borage, they kind of smell cucumbery, perhaps similar taste? Gotta try that, borage is a self-seeder and can grow everywhere if you so choose, or even if you not so choose. Borage, once you got it, you got it forever. What other annuals are good as early greens, anyone know? know I love the seeds, once the flowers have gone to seed, of the nasturtiums pickled, they are very similar to capers. Beautiful days, CynthiaM.

Freshly picked carrots, freshly picked peas, freshly picked beans, fresh, delicious strawberries, yummy crisp lettuce tossed with all the above and topped with beautiful pansies. Forget going to the kitchen, I just wander in the garden enjoying the deliciousness while surrounded by my chickens feasting on all the bugs! However, I do like to take the kale to the kitchen, break it inot pieces, toss it with oil and salt, and toast it in the oven until crispy - a family favourite here and better than chips.

ChickenTeam wrote:Freshly picked carrots, freshly picked peas, freshly picked beans, fresh, delicious strawberries, yummy crisp lettuce tossed with all the above and topped with beautiful pansies. Forget going to the kitchen, I just wander in the garden enjoying the deliciousness while surrounded by my chickens feasting on all the bugs! However, I do like to take the kale to the kitchen, break it inot pieces, toss it with oil and salt, and toast it in the oven until crispy - a family favourite here and better than chips.

Oooh, chickenteam the kale sounds lovely. Any kind of kale or the tougher winter kale? And do you cut the stems away when breaking into pieces or include all the stem (which can be tough even when you cook it)?

I cut out the middle stem, and the wrinkly sides break in to nice, natural pieces. I have used whatever kale is available, and beet greens; anything like that would work. Spinach works, too, but isn't as tasty. Bake it at 350-375 for 20-30 minutes, depending on your oven, stirring once or twice. The worst part is when the cabbage butterflies get into the kale - I am sure we have eaten a tiny roasted worm or two

Fresh maple syrup from my own trees on oatmeal or pancakes! Yum! Have a few fresh pints in the fridge right now. I know that's not something you grow (or make a salad with) though I imagine it could be used in some kind of salad dressing. However, it is fresh produce off my own property.