salads

I've been eating a lot of salads recently. Which is a really new thing- I've been pretty scornful of salads in the past because they are just so boring and such. But the friend I mentioned who doesn't eat raw veggies, he particularly laments that he can't eat apples in salads anymore. So I thought, well yeah, that sounds pretty good and I've got a jillion apples. But really, I found the key to good salads.

Kalamata olive tapenade/olivada. Mix it with a little more olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and mustard and it's a truly delicious salad dressing. I've had it with apples, raisins, walnuts, red pepper, spinach, romaine, hard boiled egg, tomato, crutons, carrots, etc. Not all at the same time mind you.

This is the salad I had tonight- yep it's as enormous as it looks. It's spinach, lettuce and blanched kale with bacon, apples, paprika peppers and radish with the dressing above. Gosh it's good. I just love kale, blanched and sauteed or baked, or whatever. It's so good and chewy.

I got my first winter csa box yesterday- squash, sweet potatoes, normal potatoes, kale, spinach, radish, beets, celeriac, turnips, leeks, lettuce, brussel sprouts (good braised wiht bacon and mustard seed but that's about it for me and brussels), onions, carrots, and my garden still has eggplants!

Hey tab, the green tomato jam is just bad. Yich. I don't like green tomatoes. what a bummer- a real waste of 5 c of sugar and an orange and apple. Oh well! I'm actually still gonna try the carrot cake jam.