Apple Carrot Salad

If you try no other apple salad, I would recommend you try this one. Its balance of sweet/sour/minty is lively & refreshing. And it's so simple!

1. Mix one quarter cup of lemon juice with two tablespoons of orange juice. Dissolve one tablespoon of honey in the juice.

2. Shred two carrots. Shred two apples directly into the juice to keep them from going brown as quickly.

3. Mix in the carrots, one quarter cup raisins, and two tablespoons chopped fresh mint.

Serve immediately... yum!

Favorite Song (on my favorite radio station during prep time): Shooglenifty- Maxine's Polka

Stuffed Beets

Another simple beet salad! With these kind of recipes, we are actually becoming rather avid fans of beets.

Simply cook the beets. I baked mine, which took a long time. I feel like there has to be a better way of cooking whole beets. To bake them you wipe them off with a dry paper towel. Then you can bake them at 400 degrees for an hour. The skin will just slide off with your fingers after that.

To stuff the beets, you hollow them out with a spoon or knife. According to the recipe, you then stuff the beets with a mixture of one cup plain yogurt, one tablespoon honey, a few tablespoons of nuts, and two apples diced small.

This mixture was quite tasty, but there is more leftover than winds up in the beets. Also, now you have extra beet that you have scooped out.

You could save this for another recipe. Or, I mixed it in the remaining apple-mix, and served it as a side salad. In fact, while the stuffed beets were a treat, I feel like you would bring out the same flavors by just shredding the beets and adding them to the apple-mix.

These beets were so pretty, and I had a difficult time capturing that with the camera. The meal was sweet, but not too sweet. All in all, a good salad if you enjoy beets & apples as much as we do.

Favorite Song (on my favorite radio station during prep time): Eliza Carthy- Mr. Magnifico

Fruit for Dinner

In a recipe like this Peanut Apple Salad, much is dependent upon the apples. I think it would be a mistake to use too sweet an apple.

This particular recipe did not specify what sort of apple ought to be used. So we purchased the cheapest apples short of red delicious (an apple I am not fond of and thought would be overly sweet & soft).

The apple we ended up with is titled "Jazz" and it is crisp & sweet with that zing of tang that I think really makes a salad-apple.

(One thought I did have later. Redder apples would be better for this salad, because the apples provide much of the color in this meal.)

Another item the recipe left wide-open was what type of nut to use. Sure the title says "peanut" but this is already allowed for with a portion of peanut butter. We happen to be rather fond of walnuts, so we opted for those.

I admit, I didn't put the full portion of sugar in our salad. Somehow it seemed wrong with the sweetness of the apples already coming through. I would say sugar to taste & dependent upon the apples.

I also added a bit more coconut, since the coconut project had produced plenty of shredded goodness. I'm sure this made the coconut more of a feature, but that's all for the better if you are as big of a coconut fan as we tend to be.

The results were reminiscent of Waldorf salad, but stood well apart. Specifically this salad was more subtly creamy, and had less dressing in general. The mayonnaise flavor was kept well in the background by the peanut butter & fresh ingredients.

It was definitely lick your spoon worthy. I made half a batch & we ate it all. The recipe said it served eight and I'd say this is about accurate.

I served this salad with pita chips. I snipped up small pitas, with a pair of kitchen scissors, and brushed them with olive oil. Then I sprinkled them with a mix of cinnamon & cardamom. Just enough to add those flavors, but not enough to draw attention on the first bite. Then I toasted them for ten minutes in the oven. The pita chips were slightly crisp bits of warm grain to complement the crisp & creamy sweetness of the salad.

All in all, it was an addictive treat bringing a refreshing sort of sweetness to a calm evening.

Favorite Song (on my favorite radio station during prep time): Karine Polwart- I'm Gonna Do It All

Pineapple & Coconut Treat

Yesterday afternoon, we took some time and a bit of effort to bake up two coconuts. We then cracked them open, one of them being a bit stubborn. Then I cut up the flesh, including the brown inner shell, into small cubes.

With a bit of the coconut water, which we had drained by piercing the eyes before baking, I blended the pieces in our food processor.

Generally a blender would do the trick. I think the processor worked better than the blender, comparing this time to the previous time I tried this project. In this case, I did not have to option of using our hand blender, because our kitten had knocked it into the trash can some time past, and it was taken away before we realized the mistake. This is a theory, but seems a likely one given our kitten's propensity for jumping on that particular counter and knocking things onto the floor or into the trash below.

When the coconut was well blended, we wrung it through some cheesecloth and collected the coconut milk in a bowl. I am a huge fan of coconut milk bought in cans at the store, but this coconut milk was richer, creamier, and sweeter than the typical fare. Besides, when you buy coconut milk at a little over a dollar a can, the $1.99 for a whole coconut seems like a steal. Albeit, it comes with an hour or so of work, but I believe it is completely worth every minute.

After dinner, my brother cut up and pureed a fresh pineapple. Then he combined it with the coconut milk, and some ice that he crushed in kitchen towels with a hammer. The final ingredient: some rum.

The result was a refreshing coconut taste first & foremost, a taste we feel is all too often overly masked or subtle in Pina Coladas. Then there was the sweet acidity of the pineapple to balance the creamy coconut. Following those, there was that subtle kick of rum, the flavor we all know & love. Granted, the concoction would have been most pleasant even without this bit of rum.

What followed was a merry board game and sips that brought a bit of the tropics to a cold midwestern night.

We used two coconuts for this project, at $1.99 each. This produced about a can's worth of refreshing coconut water, a little over a can's worth of intense coconut milk, and eight cups worth of shredded coconut, some of which is needed for our next culinary adventure...

Favorite Song (on my favorite radio station during cook time): Lunasa-Punch.