Babysitting

Rachel is going to be an extra in a movie today - they need pregnant women for a scene. So I'm babysitting Emmet for the day. We'll see how this goes. It may be a long day; on the other hand, it may go perfectly fine.

The next two recipes

Vegetable Pecan Salad

2 cups broccoli florets

1 cup cauliflower florets

½ cup snow peas, trimmed

1 large red pepper, thinly sliced

3 green onions, sliced

Vinaigrette

½ cup canola oil

2 TLB red wine vinegar

2 TLB balsamic vinegar

1 garlic clove, minced

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp ground coriander (optional)

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

1 cup pecan halves

This next salad is one of my personal favourites; we always make really big salads because we're splitting them at least three ways, plus serving them for potluck Sunday dinner, however this one can be easily halved:

Sweet Potato Black Bean Salad

Yield 12 cups

6 – 8 cups sweet potato, cooked and cubed

2 cups red pepper, chopped

2 x 540 ml can black beans, rinsed and drained

½ cup thinly sliced red onion

¼ cup parsley, chopped

Dressing

½ cup canola oil

¼ cup lime juice

2 Tbsp red wine vinegar

2 tsp sugar (or substitute)

1 tsp salt

2 small garlic cloves, minced or ¼ tsp powder

A good memory, but short

OK, we had a wind-up meeting for Mission 6:10 last night. I remembered it this morning. Oops! Oh well, I wasn't in town anyway; Bram and I had gone to Moose Jaw to visit my mother-in-law. She's doing ok; wasn't as with it as the last time we had visited. We had caught a ride with Ruth, who had to go on to Caronport to do some business with some friends there - so it was after 8:30 by the time we got back to Regina, and the meeting was at 7 pm, so I'm sorry I missed it.

Monday - already late July

Where has the time gone! Bram flies up to Yellowknife tomorrow, I think. I still don't have flight particulars.

Here's another salad recipe though - an old family favourite. Unfortunately, neither of my kids like coleslaw, but I can confidently state that it's one of Walter P's favourites.

Coleslaw Forever

1 bag coleslaw mix OR

½ bag coleslaw mix and

½ bag broccoslaw mix

Dressing

¾ cup vinegar (I like to use apple cider vinegar)

½ cup canola oil

3/8 cup sugar (or Splenda)

1 TLB salt

1 TLB celery seed

Mix dressing together; heat in microwave until sugar dissolves; pour over salad.

This salad mixes up well in an empty ice cream pail; it makes 1 gallon. It will keep for several weeks.

Actually, since neither of my kids like salads very much at all - I don't have much competition for the salads in the fridge. Here's another one that Ruth and I tweaked to make it our own:

Cauliflower Salad

1 head cauliflower, cut into florets

3 apples, cored and diced

½ cup lemon juice

3 grated carrots

½ cup sunflower seeds

½ cup parsley, diced

3 green onions, chopped

Cut up cauliflower quite small; dice apples and turn in lemon juice to prevent browning. Add remaining ingredients. You can use whatever lemon juice is left over as part of the vinaigrette.

Vinaigrette

2 TLB lime juice

2 TLB red wine vinegar

½ cup canola oil

1 tsp garlic, minced

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

2 tsp Splenda

Fixed it!

I've got Skype working properly now - got the microphone to work (just changed the settings). This makes Rose happy. It's also much easier to visit that way.

Recipes 2 and 3

I think we had around 50 for lunch today - it's really hard to count when there's that many. However we did have the group that came up with the Steiners from Arkansas plus the Williams and the Kings, Friesens and the Pradzynskis; the Vance boys, etc. The salads went over very well. It was interesting though - different people liked different ones. I'm now up to 16 salad recipes - and Ruth and I realized that we didn't have our broccoli salad recipe typed up yet - so that will make it 17.

I'm busy IMing with Rose on Skype. Her microphone works but I can't seem to get mine to work, so she talks and I IM back. It's a good thing I type quickly.

OK, here's a salad we tried for the first time yesterday - and were very impressed. You can't tell it's not potato salad (and as I'm allergic to potato salad, I think it's a great recipe because I can eat it).

Fake-um Potato Salad (Cauliflower)

1 large head cauliflower or 2 small heads chopped small and steamed

4 hard boiled eggs, sliced

½ cup parsley chopped

3 green onions chopped

2 large dill pickles or 4 small dill pickles, chopped

2 stalks celery, sliced

4 radishes, chopped

Dressing

½ cup mayonnaise or salad dressing

¼ cup dill pickle juice

Because potato salad is obviously a summer salad, I'll do another salad as well:

Nutty Wild Rice Salad

3 cups cooked wild rice (I use a mixture of wild and brown rice – about 1:4)

1 cup cherry tomatoes

½ cup chopped fresh parsley

½ cup diced yellow pepper

1/3 cup chopped green onion

1/3 cup craisins

¼ cup coarsely chopped pecans

Raspberry Dressing

1/3 cup canola oil

3 TLB vinegar (I use rice vinegar)

2 TLB raspberry jam

1 tsp Dijon mustard

1 minced garlic clove

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

Saturday Salad Making

We made five salads again this morning - actually six, if you count the jello salad. However, in our effort to make all salads that we hadn't done in the last two weeks, we ended up making all marinated-type salads. In any case, we now have in individual cookbooks (little photo albums), fifteen different salad recipes. Today we made: Marinated Vegetable salad, Lentil Black Bean Salad, Fake-um Potato Salad made with Cauliflower, Bean Salad, and Greek Salad. We also made up a huge batch of Swedish Meatballs for potluck tomorrow, and Ruth made up some low carb chocolate banana cakes (also for potluck) and some lentil casserole. I will still make some lazy man's cabbage rolls (meatless ones because I'm not going out to purchase more meat when I still have lots of lentils on hand, and they're free!).

So, I figure I need to post at least one recipe at day for the next few weeks. For today:

Moroccan Chickpea Barley Salad

Cook Barley:

1.5 cups barley

1.5 cups chicken or veggie broth or water

1.5 cups water

1 tsp salt and canola oil

Combine cooked barley with:

1 - 15 oz can of chickpeas, rinsed and strained

1 cup nuts or seeds (we usually use either slivered almonds or sunflower seeds)

1 cup diced dried apricots

2-3 chopped green onions

1 cup chopped parsley

zest and juice of one lemon

1 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp cardamom

1/4 tsp ginger

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1 to 1.5 tsp curry powder

salt to taste

You'll notice this salad doesn't actually have a dressing or vinaigrette. It doesn't need one - keeps fine without it, and is very nice.

Combine