Catch of the day: Week of June 22

For weeks, I’ve been trying to think of a name for this new photo series. Everything I came up with was boring or cliché. I still don’t love this name, but I think it’s the best of the lot. I like to think of these photos as catching a little piece of my life or the life of Edmonton every day. And this is a food blog after all – I don’t think I have one fish recipe on this site, but at least the name is food-related.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember to take a picture every day. Last week, I forgot on Monday. So here’s a four-day week for you:

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Simplest Carrot Salad

It’s still all about the simple around here.

This salad was so simple that I threw it together in about fifteen minutes before rushing out to a yoga class. The only part that takes any time is ribboning (is that a verb?) the carrots.

Until this week, the only carrot salad I can remember eaten was made with grated carrot and raspberry wine vinegar. It’s from a Moosewood cookbook and it’s delicious. But this one is entirely different. Since the carrots are thinly sliced – ribboned using a vegetable peeler – there is much less moisture than with grated carrots and it keeps much better in the fridge.

Again, this recipe is from 101 cookbooks. The original calls for the carrots, dressed with lemon juice and lemon zest, plus chopped fresh chile, cilantro and pumpkin seeds. Because of my lack of ingredients, my version turned out to be even simpler than the original. I’m not allowed to eat chiles, and my cilantro was slimy and brown. Too bad, because I’m sure it would be killer in this. Especially due to my intense love of cilantro. (Have I mentioned that? The fact that I can’t get enough of its earthy-yet-fresh taste, and J won’t touch it and swears it tastes like dirt? Yeah, I’m eating a lot of cilantro while he’s away this summer.)

So my plain-jane version was carrots, lemon and pumpkin seeds. I wasn’t super impressed when I first started eating it, but after it mellowed in the fridge I started to like the flavours more.  It surprised me that the recipes calls for you to quickly sauté the carrot ribbons in a frying pan with a little oil, but I think it’s an important step. Like Heidi says, it takes the edge off their rawness.

Final verdict: better than the raw sticks that filled my lunch bag for days, and easier than roasting or caramelizing in this June heat. And frankly, when you can eat as little as I can right now, you’re grateful for something cold, sweet and nutritious that you can grab from the fridge and eat by the forkful from the container. 

Also - I’m telling you this a bit late - but if you’re interested, go check out a culinary Q and A with me over at fellow food blogger Sharon’s site.

Catch of the day: Week of June 15

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

By the spoonful

I’ve been visiting the great blog 101 Cookbooks a lot lately. It’s written by Heidi Swanson, author of the cookbook Super Natural Cooking. Her blog is full of recipes, most of which are made with whole, natural foods. I’ve been searching her recipe index for things I can make on my limited diet, and one of the ones I squirelled away was a brown rice and asparagus dish.

To be honest, it didn’t sound that exciting – a mix of brown rice, chickpeas and asparagus with toasted almonds and a tahini dressing. Healthful, but maybe not out of this world. I shouldn’t have judged it. Being on this diet is quickly reminding me that sometimes it’s the simplest combinations of foods that are the most delicious.

This dish blew me out of the water. It’s so flavourful that I gobbled it up for supper, lunch and breakfast. And as soon as I scraped the container clean I started craving more.

The rice mixture is good, but what takes this over the top is the phenomenal dressing. I kind of want to email Heidi to personally thank her for this dressing. It’s actually more of a sauce/dressing – a bit too heavy for a green salad but perfect for something with rice or beans or vegetables. This is the kind of dressing I want to eat by the spoonful. The kind I want to keep a jar of in the fridge at all times to dress up bland foods. I seriously can’t think of much it wouldn’t taste good with.

And the best part? Four ingredients, people! It just goes to show that simple and healthy is sometimes the best thing. But of course I have to tell myself that, since I can’t eat sugar or chocolate for another two weeks.

You can find the recipe here – when I made the dressing I didn’t have any lemons so I subbed in lime juice and lime zest. Maybe that’s what made it so good?? I’m sure it would be great with lemon too.