Cobb-tastic

I made this ohhhhh two weeks ago?  Anyways, I took pictures of it, and it was delicious, so I'm sharing.  :o)

Again, inspired by fridge cleaning, I bring you: Smoked Salmon Cobb Salad.

First things first, the dressing: Honey Dill Dressing

In one of my mini mason jars, I mixed:

• 1 T mustard (I used Moosetard)
• 1 T honey
• splash of rice vinegar & olive oil (total ~4T)
• dash of salt & pepper
• 1 1/2 t dill
• dollop of yogurt

So Cobb salads aren't so complicated, just a lot of chopping going on.

Things I chopped:

• granny smith apples
• carrots
• tomatoes
• hard boiled eggs
• fresh from the smoker smoked salmon (ok, not so much chopped as pulled apart...)
• crumbled goat cheese
• avocado (for the boys, not me.  I say ick to avocado)

Served on top of spinach and whatever kind of greens came in the Full Circle box.

Accompanied by some homemade sweet potato (ok, technically yam) fries.  Just chopped, tossed in a bit of olive oil, cinnamon, and cajun seasoning.  450*F for 25-30 minutes.

And if you find yourself surrounded by strawberries and rhubarb, then naturally you should make...



Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp!

[sidenote: had I made a cobbler instead of a crisp, I really would have been cobb-tastic.  Oh well, I like crisps better when it comes to rhubarb! :o) ]

The quick how to:

  The bottom is made of the following all mixed together:

• 2'ish c. strawberries, cut and such
• 4 stalks rhubarb, chopped
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup rice flour (because I didn't have cornstarch)
• Citrus of sorts.  I used a splash of lime juice and a bit of mango orange juice (aka what I had).
• Splash of balsamic vinegar

  The top is a mixture of:

• 1 1/4 cups flour (I used whole wheat pastry)
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 6 T butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 t vanilla extract
• pinch salt
• pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg

 Yummmmmmmm!
 

When I served it, I put a little homemade frozen Greek yogurt (just Greek yogurt + some maple syrup, placed shoved in the freezer, stirring periodically while I made the crisp and salad) on top.

Alright, well now I'm hungry...

Tofu Tuesday [Saturday?] - Grilled Mint Tofu

As promised, here is the first of my missed Tofu Tuesday posts.

I decided to give grilled tofu a whirl.  As per usual, I scribbled down some ideas as they came to me during the day at work.  How I get from the topic of behavior rating scales to salad...  who knows.

So here's what I made:  Grilled Mint Tofu & Strawberry Spinach Salad

Grilled Tofu:

• 1 block of extra firm tofu - pressed
• Marinade:
• olive oil
• 2'ish tsp agave
• dash of rice vinegar
• cilantro
• mint (dried, but fresh would have been better!)
• pinch of salt

Salad Mix:

• spinach 
• sliced strawberries
• goat cheese

 So,  here's the marinade.  I sliced the tofu into thin triangles, and let them sit in there a bit.

I made sure to coat them a bit before sticking them on the [George Foreman] grill.  I used the little Foreman I bought on Spring Break in college.  I used it TONS then (best grilled cheese maker ever post day on the beach) but rarely pull it out now.  Overall I like a real grill better, but in cases such as this, the Foreman was a nice alternative to have!  Besides, I think the small triangles I cut may have fallen to their firey death on a traditional grill...  So if you're using a real outdoor grill, maybe make the triangles bigger, or perhaps cut the tofu into rectangles that would be more grill grate friendly.  :o)

 Grill the little suckers.  I re-coated them with marinade throughout the grilling process.  PS - They pop up and dance around, so beware of flying tofu!

 So, while that was going, I was thinking that I might need a bit more substance to my dinner, and bread sounded pretty delicious.  Enter, whole wheat oat quick bread.

Here's the ingredients for a small loaf of Whole Wheat Oat Quick Bread:

• 1/2 c. oats
• 1/2 c. flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour)
• 1 t. salt
• < 1 T agave (since I halved a recipe, it was one of those measurements that wasn't even steven)
• 1/2 T oil (I used olive)
• 1/2 c. milk 

Just because I like these measuring cups.  :o)

Blend the dry ingredients in a food processor to help get the oats nice and fine.  I put in about 3/4 of my oats in to get all nice and dust-like.  I put the rest of the oats in at the end because I wanted to make the bread a bit heartier.

Then add your wet ingredients.

I just mixed them in the cup together before throwing them into the food processor.  Then a took a picture of it because I liked the way it looked.  So much cooler looking in person.

After the ingredients are nice and mixed, I added a handful of chia seeds and the rest of the oats.  Again, I was going for the heartier consistency.

Baked for a bit over 20 minutes (and probably about 2 minutes too long - not the bit too dark points) at 450*F.  It didn't really taste burnt though, nor was it dry, so yay for that!  Just not as purdy in the picture.

Almost ready!

Last element of the dinner - Lime & Mint Salad Dressing
This one was a measure free concoction, however, here is what is in it:

• lime juice
• balsamic vinegar
• dried mint
• dried basil
• dash of olive oil

Kevin and Rudder fell asleep while I was making dinner, and were next to impossible to wake up from their nap.  So I figured I'd give them a few more minutes of sleep before they were dragged into the kitchen for dinner, and read through the Square Foot Gardening book Kevin ordered for me.  I still refuse to put down wooden grid markers, but otherwise I liked some of the ideas. :o)

Ta-da!  Dinner!  It was nice and light, fresh and crisp, and all around a yummy salad.  Even though I used what seems to be a lot of mint, it didn't taste extraordinarily minty to me, but just enough for that nice mint and strawberry taste of summer.  :o) 

Spring-y Salad

Well, I was really hoping to post my most recent project...  Alas, it appears that I bought cement boards instead of wood...

Just look what happened to my poor little screws!

Not once, but twice!

Some kind of super strength wood...

Ugh...  I gave up for the night.  I have a new plan of attack for tomorrow, and an idea of what to get to replace that cement like board.  Hopefully tomorrow it'll be all done and ready to reveal.  :o)


So instead, I bring you, my dinner!

My aunt sent a few recipes she had seen my way and I decided to try one out.

It was for a edamame orange salad and had fun things like wheatberries in it.  Well, I didn't have all of the ingredients, and it was a bit more complicated than I was up for on a Wednesday night, so I used the salad recipe as an inspiration.  On my lunch break at work, I did a mental inventory of what I had at home and made an ingredient list that sounded like it might go well together in a salad.

 In case you can't read that, the salad was made up of:

• Greens
• Grain Mix 
• Tangelo Slices
• Cashews
• Edamame
• Green Onion
• Goat Cheese (because I have a goat cheese problem...  seriously, I could eat it every day)

This was the "Grain Mix" I used.  It's from the frozen section at Costco.  Pretty handy to have as a quick side, and good for using to mix with things.  :o)   It's made up of wheatberries, barley, and quinoa, so I was somewhat following the wheatberry ingredient in the original recipe. :o)

I made my own salad dressing (sometimes I wonder why I even bother buying any...)

The dressing was made up of:

• Lime Juice
• Rice Vinegar
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Honey
• Almond Butter (just a dollop)  

My new mini mason jars are PERFECT for making a small amount of dressing.

So putting together a salad is pretty self-explanatory, so I'll just show you the picture of what it looked like before I devoured it.  :o)   I had half a sweet potato on the side, because I was just in the mood for a sweet potato.  

Definitely what I was in the mood for.

Thanks Aunt Lynne for the recipe!  :o)