Wholesome Brown Rice Salad

Our Christmas Day lunch is a cold meats and salads affair; it's too hot for a roast dinner when it's 40C in the shade in our down-under Summery Australia. (The weather was actually milder this year (at our place) but I had already roasted the chickens on Christmas Eve so no last-minute switch to a hot roast dinner was entertained.

A big bowl of Brown Rice Salad. 

Yum!

Amongst the array of salads I made for our family feast was this delicious and wholesome brown rice salad. It's made with healthy brown rice, lots of colourful vegetables, crunchy nuts, fresh herbs and my-favourite feta. The lemon and honey dressing is so very simple. My kind of food! 

My version of this salad combines the basis of this recipe, from Katie Workman of The Mom 100 with the currants, nuts and feta from this recipe by Nicola of Eat Well NZ. I reduced the olive oil from 1/3cup to 1/4cup for the dressing and used pecan nuts, instead of cashew nuts, because I had pecans in the pantry. It all mixed together deliciously!

🤎 Wholesome Brown Rice Salad 🤎

*** Omit the nuts if you have a nut allergy.***

Salad Ingredients:

4 cups cooked brown basmati rice

1 cup coarsely grated carrot

1 cup diced cucumber

1/2 cup diced red capsicum 

1/2 cup thinly sliced celery

1/2 cup chopped spring onion

1/2 cup toasted and roughly chopped pecan nuts

handful (or two) of currants

1 block of your favourite feta cheese

1/4 cup chopped parsley

2 Tablespoons fresh thyme leaves

Dressing Ingredients:

1/4 cup olive oil 

3 Tablespoons lemon juice

2 Tablespoons honey

1 Tablespoon white white vinegar

1 Tablespoon mustard

salt & pepper

1.  Mix all the vegetables, nuts and herbs through the cooked brown rice. 

2. Crumble in the feta cheese and sprinkle over the currants.

3. Whisk up the ingredients for the dressing and pour over the top of the salad. 

4. Toss to combine. Refrigerate in an air-tight container.

I doubled the recipe and made a huge bowl of this rice salad so there was plenty leftover; some to send home with family and some for us to enjoy bowlfuls of for lunch and dinner the next day. Lazy leftovers have to be one of the best things about Christmas Day lunch!

What did you cook for Christmas at your place that you have leftovers of?

Meg

A Salad with Cranberry Hibiscus Leaves

I am wanting to grow more edible perennials in my garden for food around the fence line!  One of the first I've planted is Cranberry Hibiscus. I love its deep dark red leaves and stems and it's tiny pink hibiscus flower. It's grown quickly and its tiny, young leaves are delicious and tart, just like dried cranberries.  (A warning though that one should not eat too many leaves at once or too often as they contain oxalic acid, a recommendation explained here in this fact sheet about Cranberry Hibiscus).

Deep red leaves of Cranberry Hibiscus.

I wanted to use some of these new leaves and, when searching for culinary inspiration, found this recipe for Sweet Potato and Pear Salad with Crunchy Chickpeas. I made my own version using what I had. This meant I used up a half tin of chickpeas from the fridge,  switched rocket with roasted broccoli and substituted the leaves of cranberry hibiscus for dried cranberries. I went nowhere near a fancy dressing (though the one from the recipe sounds delicious) instead just lazily drizzling on a little balsamic. Here's my take on it:

Roasted chunks of sweet potato.

Not-so-crunchy chickpeas & tart cranberry hibiscus leaves.

 Little cubes of feta & roasted broccoli too...

... and sweet slivers of roasted nashi pear. 

Something a bit different! I think the only thing I'd change would be the chickpeas. I found I really did want the crunchy ones!

Have a lovely weekend everyone. 

Meg

p.s. Cranberry hibiscus grows well from cuttings. 

Roasted Carrot & Quinoa Bake

I adore roasted carrots and I'm fond of fluffy quinoa so I was always going to love this delicious dish. A flavourful and nutritious bake, all roasted in the one tin, makes a perfectly simple meal just as it is or a lovely side dish. Leftovers most definitely make for a healthy lunch salad the next day too! 

Simple & delicious!

There are roasted parsnips along with carrots in Rukmini Iyer's original recipe from her cookbook, "The Roasting Tin:  Simple One Dish Dinners". While I don't mind parsnips, I didn't have any so I just roasted plenty of delicious carrots instead! Here's how it came together in my kitchen:

Carrot & Quinoa Bake

4 - 5 large carrots

2 cloves garlic

fresh rosemary, 2 sprigs 

2 bay leaves

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1 Tablespoon honey

salt & pepper

120g quinoa, thoroughly rinsed 

350ML boiling water

lemon

1.   Preheat oven to 180C.

2.   Peel carrots and halve lengthwise then cut into long chunks.

3.   Put carrots in a roasting dish with crushed garlic, chopped rosemary, bay, olive oil & 

       honey. 

4.   Toss together with your hands so carrots coated in herbed & honeyed oil. Season with

       salt & pepper.

5.   Bake, uncovered, for approximately 40minutes. 

6.   Remove from oven. Carefully mix in rinsed quinoa and boiling water making sure you 
      loosen all the caramelised goodness from the bottom of your roasting tin.

7.   Cover with foil and return to the oven to roast for further 20minutes.

8.   Remove from the oven and lift off the foil. Fluff up the quinoa with a fork and then leave
      for a further five minutes. 

9.   Serve with a wedge of lemon so it's lovely juice can be squeezed over the top. 

This beautifully simple bake can be served with peppery rocket, as it is in the cookbook, or you could mix in some baby peas, bright green and sweet, instead.  Either way, it's delicious!

Meg

Two Salads for one Yoghurt Dressing

We eat salads year round here. In Winter, warm salads made with baked and nourishing veggies and in Summer, as it is here now, fresh and simple salads are a staple. With our Summer salads, I like dressings that are light and tangy. My favourite is a very simple yoghurt dressing that I use as an alternative to mayonnaise.

Light & tangy yoghurt dressing.

This dressing works really well with homemade potato salad and coleslaw too.  It takes just a few minutes to whip up. All you need for a small salad is 1/3 cup natural unsweetened yoghurt, 1 teaspoon of seeded mustard and 1/2 to a full teaspoon of raw honey. Salt and pepper too if you wish.  

Homemade coleslaw with yoghurt dressing.

Homemade Coleslaw:  Wash and finely shred cabbage. Chop spring onion, capsicum and celery. Grate carrot. Mix together with yoghurt dressing and chill.

Homemade potato salad with the same yoghurt dressing.

Simple Potato Salad:  Wash, chop and steam potatoes until tender but not too soft. (Leave the skin on for extra nutrition and fibre.) Rinse under cold water and drain. Mix through yoghurt dressing. Add some chipped spring onion or chopped chives if you have some. Chill until ready to serve. 

On warm Summer evenings, homemade salads made with a tangy and refreshing dressing like this one are perfect  for lazy dinners and barbecues. What's your favourite Summer salad or dressing?

Meg

Summery Bean Salad

We are currently harvesting crispy young beans by the handful from our garden. They are so fresh and crunchy! I always aim to use something from our garden in the meals I make so I thought a light and Summery bean salad would be a beautiful way to eat our homegrown beans.

Beautiful fresh beans from our garden.

The recipe I was inspired by, for Green Bean & Almond Salad, comes from Georgia Harding who develops nutritious and delicious recipes over on her blog, Well Nourished.  I decided my buttery yellow beans would be just as lovely as green beans and that the haloumi cheese I did have would be just a nice as the feta I didn't have.  This salad was so good! Just the thing for homegrown beans picked on a Summer morning.

For exact quantities of ingredients, you can click on the link above to Georgia's recipe. I just added amounts I felt worked with the handfuls of beans I had.  After all, I don't think there's such a thing as too much haloumi (not if you love cheese like I do!) 😉

Summery Bean Salad

Top & tail your fresh beans. Steam them lightly so they remain crisp.
(Plunge into icy water to stop them cooking!)

Toast slivered almonds in a dry fry pan.

Fry some little cubes of haloumi cheese until golden.

Mix ingredients together in a bowl with handfuls of dark green baby spinach.

Pour over dressing before serving & toss until evenly coated.

For the dressing:  Whisk together 2Tablespoons olive oil, 1Tablespoon lemon juice, 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar, sea salt and pepper. 

Beans are one of my favourites in the veggie patch. I love snacking on them just as they are (many don't make it upstairs to the kitchen) but this salad is so delicious that I'll need to make sure I leave enough beans to make it at least once more before our Summer ends.

Meg

Wonderful Wombok Salad

A fresh Chinese cabbage, crunchy ingredients and a peanut-y dressing make a wonderful, fresh and light salad. Perfect for warm Spring days!

Fresh ingredients for a delicious, crunchy salad.

Wombok forms the leafy basis of this delicious salad. It is an oval-shaped Chinese cabbage with distinctive lighter-green, crinkly leaves. Finely shredded and then tossed with other fresh, raw veggies like capsicum, spring onion, carrot and celery, sprinkled with toasty slivered almonds and sesame seeds and finished off with a generous drizzle of a tangy, peanut butter dressing. So good...  and so good for you!  (Please note that it's not suitable for those with nut allergies.)

As soon as I spotted the wombok, grown just to the North of our city on the Sunshine Coast, and available in our little local organic market shop, I knew I could put it together with the  crunchy celery from my garden to make this salad.  Here's how it came together in my kitchen:

Wash, dry and finely shred leaves of the wombok. 

Chop spring onion, celery, capsicum and grate carrot. 

Toss prepared salad vegetables together in a bowl.

Sprinkle with toasted slivered almonds & sesame seeds.

(Toss again to incorporate throughout the salad.)

This is a very versatile salad. I don't work off exact quantities for the salad because you can add as much as you like of the extra veggies to the shredded wombok. It really doesn't matter if you use one carrot or two, half a capsicum or a whole one.  You could add some chunks of de-seeded cucumber, some fresh bean sprouts or some fried Chinese noodles for extra crunch.  Shredded chicken is nice if you want to add a meat to the salad.

There are many different kinds of dressings that you could use with this salad. I chose to make this peanut-buttery dressing that I found over at the Laughing Spatula website.  I whisked up the dressing separately and then drizzled it over the top of each serve rather than adding it to the salad bowl. Leftovers of both went separately into the fridge ready for lunch the next day. (No soggy salad that way!)

This is a really lovely salad. It's fresh, it's crunchy and it's totally delicious. Enjoy!

Meg

Simple Pasta Salad

Although we are in the last month of Winter, the days here have been reminiscent of Spring.  Daytime temperatures have been in the low to mid 20Cs and, while the mornings have still had some chill to them, the afternoons have been quite balmy. Perhaps this is the uniquely Australian season that Dr. Tim Entwisle calls "Springer". Perfect for such warmer weather, and a move away from the heavier and more hearty foods of Winter, are salads like this one:

A simple homemade salad.

Simple Pasta Salad

1 packet of "bow-tie" pasta (or other suitable pasta such as fusilli)

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1 red onion

4 rashers bacon

1 small red capsicum

1 medium zucchini

1/3 cup frozen peas

Dressing:

4 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon seeded mustard

1 -2 teaspoons honey

1.  Cook pasta according to packet directions.  Drain well and place in a large salad bowl.

2.  Peel and chop onion finely. Remove rind from bacon and cut into cubes. Wash and 

     remove seeds from capsicum. Chop capsicum and zucchini into small pieces.

3.  Heat olive oil in heavy-base frying pan and gently fry onion and bacon until onion has

     softened and the bacon has browned slightly.

4.  Add capsicum and fry gently until this begins to soften. 

5.  Add zucchini and frozen peas. Fry gently until peas have defrosted.

6.  Remove from heat and add fried vegies and bacon to cooked pasta. Combine well & chill.

7.  Whisk together ingredients for dressing and have at the ready to pour over this salad 

     just before serving.

This salad can be "jazzed up" with some toasted pine nuts or some crumbled feta. It's perfect for a weekend lunch, to pack for a picnic or to take to a barbecue. Perhaps it will fit in with your weekend plans.

Have a lovely weekend.

Meg

Beautiful Beetroot Salad

Homegrown beetroot is something special. Plump, purple and full of earthy flavour ... so very different to the beetroot that comes in a tin! With some of our fresh beetroots, harvested this past weekend and roasted until tender, I made this beautiful beetroot salad. It was full of flavour and goodness. Delicious!

Beautiful Beetroot Salad

The main ingredients of Emma Jansen's recipe for Roasted Pumpkin, Beetroot, Chickpea & Feta Salad were the inspiration for this version. The main difference is that I used marinated feta and the herby marinating oil for the dressing. This is how it came together:

Roast beetroots and pieces of pumpkin until tender.

(See note below on how to roast beetroot.)

Rinse and drain 1 tin of chick peas & put in a salad bowl.

Crumble pieces of a marinated feta & mix with chickpeas.

Lightly steam broccoli florets until bright green but still crisp & add to salad bowl.

Mix in pieces of roasted pumpkin.

Peel & then cube roasted beetroots & put into a separate dish.

Drizzle over dressing, toss to coat salad & serve with pieces of roasted beetroot on top.
(See note below on how I made dressing.)

I haven't written exact quantities because, with a salad like this, you can put in as much or as little as you like. I used half a decent sized pumpkin, 4 large beetroots, a fair bit of feta (because I love it) and 1 small head of broccoli. You can tweak those amounts to suit, you could add fresh baby spinach leaves instead of broccoli, you could experiment with the marinating oils you use for different flavours too.

Dressing:  Blend together 1/4cup of the herby oil from the marinated feta, squeeze in juice of half a small lemon or lime, add a few teaspoons of Pomegranate molasses (or you could use balsamic vinegar) and season with freshly ground black pepper to taste. Mmmm...

How to Roast Beetroot:  Cut the stems of each beetroot to around 2cm. Wrap each unpeeled beetroot in foil. Bake in oven, at 180C, until tender. You know they are ready when you can poke a skewer through the foil and easily into the beetroot.

I'm so glad I planted many beetroots this year. I'll be making this salad (and versions of it) as long as there is fresh beetroot coming in from the garden. YUM!

Meg

Here & Now 9

Here & Now it is hot and it will be scorchingly so for quite a few more days to come. While it would be easy to wish this season of heatwaves away, I am trying to work with the challenges of the season while waiting patiently for the Autumn to come.

The creamy, fragrant Summer blooms of Frangipani.

Sweet, little homemade apricot and coconut balls.

A fresh, nutritious pasta salad.

 An orchid in bloom on a battered old table.

Loving //  The Summer scent of Frangipani wafting indoors from our neighbour's tree.

Eating //   Healthy salads with spinach or broccoli for extra nutrition.
Drinking // Jugs full of cold, icy water with or without slices of lemon.
Feeling //  Grateful for the solar panels on our roof that offset some of our Summer energy costs.
Making //  Homemade goodies in the kitchen.
Thinking //  "This Summer could go on for a long while yet!"
Dreaming //   Of long alpine walks in cooler climes.

I wonder what your here & now is like, wherever you live? If you'd like to share, you can join in with Sarah, over at Say! Little Hen  like I have done. She hosts this short but sweet link-up each month.

Meg

New Year Days

These early New Year Days have unfolded contentedly, filled with time here in our home. We haven't ventured much beyond our own blue gates. We've not had the need or the desire to go far. I simply love days like these!

There's been a little gardening:

A creamy yellow Zinnia flower.

There's been some baking:

A fresh batch of oaty Anzac biscuits. 

There's been much healthy eating:

Our Garden Salad with chicken and a creamy yoghurt dressing.

There's been a spot of sewing:

 The beginnings of a new dress.

Practising buttonholes! 

There's been lots of cleaning and organising:

The much neater corner of my sewing table.

There's been a bit of knitting:

A new washcloth with a new pattern.

There's been plenty of reading and board games and music and cricket and fun.

Just two of the many books we are enjoying these holidays.

In amongst all these joys, there has been the annual packing away of the Christmas tree and lights and new calendars have replaced the old. This new year is off to a lovely start!

I hope your New Year Days are unfolding contentedly too.

Meg

Rocket Flowers

At the beginning of Spring, it is the simple white flowers of leafy, spicy Rocket (Arugula) heralding the change to a warmer season in our garden. Cross-shaped blooms, four veined petals in each, sway in the breeze atop the long, thin flower stalks these salad greens are sending skywards. These beautiful blossoms are edible and, just like the plant's dandelion-like leaves, they add a pungent peppery "kick" to salads.

The simple, beautiful and edible blooms of Rocket.

It isn't their spiciness attracting our native bees to these flowers though. Rather, these simple, unruffled flowers give them easy access to pollen and nectar.  After finally cutting back the basil "supermarket" our native bees had been foraging in, letting the Rocket flower and go to seed has provided an alternate feast for these tiny, busy little creatures.

 A little native bee gathering pollen from a Rocket flower.

After these pretty flowers are spent, plump, bright green seed pods form. Encased within are the developing seeds.  When these pods are dry and brown, I will pick them and collect the little brown seeds hiding within. Then, I will have free Rocket seeds to store and share and scatter next year.

Plump seed pods form after the flowers.

Saved seeds mean more rocket next year. More rocket means more of these simple, sweet flowers which means more seeds and then, again, more rocket and in turn more flowers. Our native bees (and me) will be happy indeed:)

Meg