Hidden Harvest Ottawa! :-D

Hey there!

So I’ve been poking around the internet – as one does – looking at prices for local honey and maple syrup (and, in the process, discovering Zurcher, an Ottawa-based beekeeping supplier).

Based on the guess that Ghost and I go through about 24Kg of sugar for tea, baking, and general use PLUS about 15-18Kg for use in canning over the course of a year, I figured that I would have a look at prices.

Local honey runs about $10/Kg, give or take, with the price going down a bit as the order gets bigger. (For example, Forest Dew Honey sells a 17Kg plastic pale for $110.00)

Local maple syrup is typically double that (given the amount of boiling involved, this does not actually surprise me).

Cocoa Camino sells their cane sugar in industrial-sized bags (25Kg each) but they don’t list the prices on their website. (I’ve written them to enquire). I’m under the impression that it will be less expensive to import fairly traded cane sugar than to buy local, fairly traded honey.

I find this… awkward to consider. Because it brings me face to face with issues of personal (and national?) food security and food sovereignty (you can read about that here).

The other day, I was writing about (more mentioning, I realize) beet sugar and how Ontario’s sugar beet crops are (a) monsanto, and (b) grown entirely on contract for a sugar refinery in Michigan.

I want to see us – “us” meaning “Canada” and “Ontario”, but also “us” meaning “the greater Ottawa area” and “my neighbourhood” and “me” – in a more food-sovereign position. I want “us” to produce food for ourselves waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay before we look at producing it for export.

You’ve heard me going on and on and on about why seasonal/local eating matters to me on so many different levels. Religiously, economically, environmentally, self-sufficiently, all of it. It’s a Big Deal.

So I’m kind of over-the-moon excited about THIS.
ZOMG!!! 😀

It’s like Not Far From the Tree, but in Ottawa! 😀 😀 😀

So I’ve gotten in touch with Hidden Harvest Ottawa, signed up for their newsletter, volunteered to be a harvester, and am generally chomping at the bit to get out and collect the fruit of my neighbours (with their permission… unlike last year).
I need to inform all my hippy-pagan friends about this endevor and get them involved. 😀

Anyway. So that’s my squee about Hidden Harvest.

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden. 🙂

Cranberry Currant Cake

So. My girlfriend and I both have a copy of the Company’s Coming “Muffins & More” book. We kind of chuckled when we found that one out.
I’m a particular fan of their cornmeal muffins recipe BUT today I decided to branch out a little bit.

There’s a recipe in there for a lemon-raisin loaf that I adapted a little bit.

I used milk instead of water
I used dried cranberries instead of raisins (and just through them in the batter rather than soaking them)
AND
I used pumpkin seeds instead of pecan crumbles
I also added a teaspoon of orange extract and about a tablespoon of (artificial) vanilla

It’s in the oven now (and will be for the next hour+) but I thought I’d ramble just a little bit about how to shift this recipe that much more towards “local”.

The obvious out-of-place bits here are the brown sugar and the lemon juice. Ways to change up the recipe to accomodate that stuff might include:

Using maple sugar, beet sugar[1], maple syrup (and cutting back some of the other liquid), or honey (Same deal) instead of cane sugar.

Using raspberry juice, cranberry juice, or sumac tea[1] in lieu of the lemon juice.

I don’t have a clue what to do about the vanilla, other than just using the fake stuff (though I don’t know where that’s produced) – alternatively, you could use a sweet liqueur – like sortilege or casis – instead of the vanilla extract.

The raisins, dried cranberries, or other dried fruit still works (I think dried red currants or fresh rhubarb would be glorious in this, as might fresh raspberries – although, again, with having to cut out some of the other liquid to keep things from getting soupy).

Anyway. So those are my thoughts on how to switch up that recipe a little more. The end result might go something like this:

Cranberry Currant Cake

INGREDIENTS
½ C butter or margarine
1 C creamed honey or maple syrup
2 eggs
1 tbsp crème de casis (or other berry liqueur)
½ C milk soured with ¼ C cranberry juice OR raspberry vinegar

2½ C whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt

¼ C dried red currants/cranberries OR fresh, diced rhubarb
2 tbsp pumpkin seeds OR ¼ C crumbled/chopped nuts[2]

DIRECTIONS

1) Preheat the oven to 350F
2) Cream together the butter, eggs, casis, and honey
3) Add the cranberry-soured milk and blend until smooth
4) Add the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda[3] and mix until smooth
5) Add the dried fruit and pumpkin seeds and stir until well-distributed
6) Grease a 9″x9″ square baking pan
7) Pour the batter into the cake pan
8) Bake until dark-golden brown (about 1 hour)
9) Allow to cool
10) Serve – possibly frosted with a casis frosting, possibly with fresh/sauced fruit and whipped cream – and enjoy.

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.

[1] Taber’s beet sugar refinery – Lantic/Rogers – does a mix of beet and cane sugar. The sugar beets grown in Ontario are grown on contract for a beet-sugar refinery in Michigan. The Michigan refinery is much closer to me, and the sugar source is Canadian. Unfortunately, it’s also a monsanto crop. Boo! 😛 At least when I’m buying imported cocoa camino, I’m buying organic and fair trade. O.O

[2] There’s a grower in Niagara who does filberts, heart nuts, and chestnuts, and there are black walnuts available in Ottawa (if you can beat the squirrels to them). I believe there are a couple of shagbark hickory orchards around Ottawa as well. Hidden Harvest Ottawa may know more…

[3] Alternatively, you could use four eggs, separated, and just beat the ever-loving hell out of the egg-whites. You could also make this a yeast-raised cake, but I’m not 100% sure how that would work out.

Crafting Update – Candles (and, to a lesser extent, Jewelry)

Flower Moon started about a week ago (for all that the actual flowers have been around for ages). Chances are that the flowers in question, this year, are roses and hawthorn blossoms. The crocuses and service berry blossoms of cooler months and earlier new moons are long-gone, and the apple, pear, and cherry trees are putting out their fruit (long from ripe, yet, but you can see it forming). Bu the hardy roses I see in people’s front yards and lining parking lots, parks, and bus terminals? They’re just opening up right now, a dozen shades of pink – from palest blushes and bisques to magentas, fuschias, and madders so deep they become purples and reds – filling the air with their scent and their promise of summer still coming into its fullness.

I’ve been working in the wonderful world of crafts today.
I’ve worked on my Honey-Month-inspired earring collection, and I’ve also made beeswax candles.

Not many of the latter.

One is an experiment to see if the “dark beeswax” pre-tabbed tea-light wicks I got actually do have a two-inch burn pool. If yes, I’m set for making votive-esques. If no, it’s back to the drawing board (but at least I’ll have lots of tealight wicks). I’m burning the last of my previous (thinner wicked) votive-esque in the hopes of doing a refill (there’s lots of unburned wax in this one) while switching out the used up (soon) wick for one of the new, thicker tealight wicks, just to see what burns better/more.

The other candles – seven in total – were re-fills (new wick, replenished wax) for the tealights that live on my altars. My altars are all lit up now. It’s been a while, so I think my gods are happy for the quick meal. I’ll have to spend some time doing refills on the beeswax tea lights I made earlier so that I don’t run out. (They are shallow tealights – they only burn for an hour or so, typically – so I go through them pretty fast).

I find my new wicks are (possibly due to being thicker) slower to light. We’ll see what else is different about them – will the tealights burn faster because the wick is thicker? Will they burn more evenly/completely?
We’ll find out! 🙂

My tealights don’t look anything like this.

Anyway. That’s my crafting update.

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden. 🙂

Pasta with Dandelion Greens, Asparagus, and Shrimp

Hey everyone.

So I picked a zip-lock bag of dandelion greens the other day and decided to throw them into dinner tonight. President’s Choice (has apparently been monitoring my purchases… and) now sends me a local/seasonal-focused food magazine every so often. (I’ve only recieved two, so I have no idea how often they come). I was quite chuffed to see a whole section on dandelion-greens recipes (even as I kind of chuckled over dandelions at the grocery store when they’re so abundant and FREE pretty much everywhere outside) which, handily, included the kinds of stuff I tend to throw in with them anyway (go me, for knowing what to toss in with bitter-type greens to make them super-delicious!)

So, having a bag of frozen shrimp in the freezer, I decided to take my cue from one of the magazine’s recipes (oranges, shrimp, dandelions, and a wack of other stuff that I don’t remember) and make my own shrimp-and-dandilions concoction.

Here it is:

~*~

Dandelion Asparagus Pasta with Shrimp

INGREDIENTS
1 flat of pre-sliced button mushrooms
1 sandwich bag of dandelion greens (about 2C, raw? I’m guessing)
4 cocktail tomatoes
8 asparagus spears
12 cocktail shrimp (tails removed)
6 bocconcini balls
2 large cloves of garlic
2 tbsp butter

1.5 C rotini noodles

DIRECTIONS
1) toss the butter, mushrooms, and shrimp into a frying pan
2) quarter the cocktail tomatoes and mince the garlic, and add them to the frying pan and turn the heat on (low)
3) wash the dandelion greens
4) steam/blanch the dandelion greens (I put them in a sceive and just set the sceive in boiling water, with a lid on everything) for ~5 minutes
5) while the dandelions are blanching, wash and chop the asparagus into 1″ lengths
6) rinse the dandelion greens in cold water
7) set the asparagus in the sceive (or other strainer) and blanch them for ~5 minutes (maybe less) until bright green
8) While the asparagus is blanching, roughly chop the dandelion greens and add them to the frying pan
9) Add the asparagus to the frying pan
10) Re-fill the sauce pan that you used to blanch the dandelions and asparagus
11) Cook the rotini noodles while the vegetable mixture heats through
12) Drain the pasta and add it to the vegetable mixture
13) Dice the bocconcini balls and toss them in with the rest of the mixture at the last minute (I did not do this, and wound up with a large lump of mozzerella in the middle of my pasta dish that had to be re-chopped and re-added, so…)
14) Serve (possibly with a white wine, though we don’t have that this evening) and enjoy. 🙂

~*~

I added a little grainy mustard to the veggies (like 1/4 tsp). You could also add a little white wine or some chopped onion to the mixture. You could use lemon-marinated tinned tuna in lieu of the shrimp to great effect (I think).

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.

Unveiled – Preliminary Thoughts/Experiences

And, for my second post of the day (’cause, aparently, this is how I do things these days?) I’m going to talk a little bit about Unveiled.

A while back, I won a small freebie bottle of Unveiled from Miss Sugar over at Charmed, I’m Sure.

I was expecting it to smell floral/herbal on me but… it actually smelled a lot like cinamon hearts. And red jube-jubes.
o.O
I’m not complaining — candy smells WAY better on me than florals ever do (and the red jube jubes might be due to whatever Miss Sugar uses as a carrier oil – I’m thinking “sweet almond” and it’s tendency to smell a tad fruity, so maybe that’s it).

But, yeah. Sweet, spicy, and fruity. (Hah! Just like me! :-D) Who knew?

I put a little (a lot?) on my wrists and a very thin smear across my forehead before heading out into the wide world to go willow hunting (and dandelion gathering, as well). My hope was that, by using it, I might find myself hitting on insights and poetry more readily than I have been of late, and/or picking up on the life all around me a little more intensely than usual.
I have some ideas, yes, but that could just as easily be due to placebo effect or, conversely, to my need to go for a walk and get out of the house in general.
So I don’t know.

I’ll be wearing it as a perfume for sure – tonight in particular, but also Just Whenever – because it definitely works on me as such (Three hours after the fact it smells faintly of sweetness and… butter? :-)). But I’m also going to have to try it while working in magical/religious/ritual contexts and/or while trying to do a tarot reading or similar. We’ll see.

It’s funny (or something). I’m only really able to recognize those veil-drawn-aside experiences when they’re body-rocking intense. I don’t know how to recognize them in their more subtle forms. Don’t even know what to look for, really.

Anyway. That’s where I’m at with Unveiled. We’ll see how I do later on. 🙂

TTFN,
Meliad, the Birch Maiden. 🙂

Birch and Willow and Morning Glories – Green Things Growing All Around Me

Today I went down to Dow’s Lake.

My girlfriend saved a branch from a birch tree that was cut down on the site of a house she’s building. It’s currently sitting in a bottle of water and putting out new leaves. (Go birch branch! :-D)

I went to Dow’s Lake because I know there’s a weeping willow (and about a zillion not-so-weeping willows) growing along its Western shore, and willow has a hormone (or something) in it that encourages it – and anything near it – to start putting out roots[1]. (The bit of willow totally wilted on the way home and I just about had to pour it into the water-bottle, but it’s perked up completely in the past two hours. Go willow! :-))

While I was there, I picked the better part of a sandwich-bag full of dandelion (and related) greens. I figured: I’m between a lake and a bike path, and the other side of the bike path is a marsh. The soil’s probably way cleaner here than it is across the lake, near the road. Right then!

So I got us some greens to add to our salad this evening.
The salad is going to be:
blanched dandelion greens
blanched asparagus
raw cocktail tomatoes
AND
bocconcini balls

… With the possibility of adding mushrooms and/or lemon-marinated tuna (tinned) to the mix as well.

We’re going out tonight to see the stage/storytelling show based on C.S.E. Cooney’s Braiding the Ghosts. I’m going to get dressed up for it – rings braided into my hair, my Queen Modthryth necklace (from Idol Ceremony), a dab or two of Miss Sugar’s Unveiled, and a halter-necked red dress that I made for myself, years ago now, out of an old batiked skirt. 🙂

The garden is coming along. I need to give it some water once the afternoon has worn on a little more, but everything seems to be settling into their pots happily and without incident (YAY!). The tomato plant has three or four baby green tomatoes on it already (here’s hoping it gets GROWING though) and the basil and dill seem to be putting out further growth.
The morning glories sprouted this morning! 😀
As did one of the Kentucky Wonder beans! 😀
The cucumber (needs watering, but) is putting out new leaves and getting a little bigger every day.
There seems to be something bravely starting to sprout in the Swiss Chard bucket, but I have no idea what it is. (We’ll see). I’m really, REALLY hoping that I get some swiss chard out of this seed packet. O.O

I spent the last two days pushing butternut squash seeds into (large) traffic-calming islands and open dirt on the public sides of chainlink fences around my neighbourhood. I’m hoping that, even though I don’t have the space (or the soil) to grow a butternut squash plant myself, I’ll be able to harvest at least some of the squash that (hopefully) grows and thrives where I’ve planted it around the neighbourhood. (Though I’m also fully expecting a lot of it to either (a) get mowed by industrious lawn-mowing-individuals, or (b) get harvested by hungry, squash-loving neighbours).
So we’ll see. 🙂

Anyway. That’s my Green Things Growing post for the moment.

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden. 🙂

[1] If you’re the kind of guerilla gardener who snags cuttings from neighbourhood plants that you like the look of, you can (theoretically) use a cutting of new willow growth (not dry and fallen off the tree) in lieu of some kind of Rooting Medium to help get your cutting to develope into a separate new plant.

Victoria Day/Local Beltain and Some Thoughts on Container Gardening

Summer has well and truely arrived.
Victoria Day Weekend typically corresponds to the beginning of Summer in Ottawa, and this year has been no exception. The temperatures have soared over the past week, and this weekend has so far included both (a) a barbicue, and (b) lots of sex. Also, I’m sitting on my balcony in nothing but a sarrong, typing away on my laptop, surrounded by The Garden. Summer is definitely here. 😀

Which brings me to: The Garden.
The (probably) last of which we put in in yesterday:

At one end of the balcony, we have my tomato plant (now joined by a Cinnamon Basil plant and a few scarlet runner beans (seeds) wich – hopefully – will germinate and get growing without incident in the next ten days or so. There is also a pot of Chocolate Mint and two window boxes – one contains “maiden pink” dianthus (the plan being to (a) have pretty, pink flowers, and (b) be able to make a clove-and-nutmeg flavoured iced tea out of the flower petals) plus kentucky wonder beans (seeds), and the other contains dill (plant) and nasturtiums (seeds).

At the other end of the balcony, we have a third window box this one contains a lavender plant and a lot of morning glories (seeds); plus two rubbermade bins and a smaller container. The smaller container has been seeded with garlic chives, while the two bins contain – respectively – cucumber + nasturiums + scarlet runner beans; AND rainbow swiss chard (which, with any luck, will actually sprout — so far there’s only been one, and it was very much in micro-green form. I’ve added the entire rest of the package in the hopes of getting some leafy greens on the balcony this summer.

I look around my neighbourhood – which is mostly apartment building and the kind of flat-roofed working class houses that have been here for the past hundred years (there’s not much around here that dates to earlier than that, because the whole area was pretty much wiped out by a massive fire in 1900).
I look at these buildings – at their empty, pebble-strewn rooves, and wonder how much food we could be growing in the full sun, almost-zero-shade expanses above our heads.

It makes me want to extend fire escapes skyward, anchor ladders to the rooves, set up a carefully weighted gang-plank (gain-plank?) from my balcony to the (lower) roof next door and smuggle over punctured wading pools, vermiculite, soil, and seedlings, and grow sun-loving plants in a place where they can thrive.

My balcony garden eats a good eight litres of water ever day or two. Which is a lot of water. Filling the bottom three two inches of rubbermade bin with vermiculite – or even gravel – and setting an unven length of PVC pipe into it, so that I could pour those two litres of water into the pipe, and let the plants suck the water up with their roots as-needed.
If I add more bins (likely, eventually) and can get ahold of a good load of gravel (or styrofoam chips?) I will probably try this. You still need drainage holes, but they go part-way up the side, rather than on the bottom. I think it’s worth a shot, and may help to lower the water requirements for my garden. 🙂

Tonight, we’ll be dining in the garden this evening — Sir Perry pear cider pared with stir-fried beef and asparagus, over couscous with peppers and tomatoes (almost all of which was donated by a friend who had an overly abundant barbicue on Friday – SCORE!) — So I should probably get the dinner started.

As such, that’s my prattle for today.

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden. 🙂

More About Dandelions

Hey again.

Just a quick couple of links to other people’s posts about how to use wild dandelions beyond the obvious salad greens:

First, of course, is dandelion root “coffee” (which my ex girlfriend adores as-is, but which I think would be neat used as a mocha-esque flavour for ice cream, cupcakes, or other goodies).

According to this site, you can also blanch dandelion roots and include them in mixes of (sweeter) roots like beets, celeriac, carrots and parsnips for use in casseroles and stews.

According to this page on edible flowers, young dandelion blossoms have a sweet, honey-like flavour (if you pick them small and cut off the green parts). You could combine them with, say, red clover blossoms, cornflowers (bachelor’s buttons), hardy rose petals, elderberry flowers, a handful of rhubarb slivers[1] to make an iced tea reminiscent of lemonade with hints of licorice, clove, and nutmeg hiding in its flavours.

The Daily Spud suggests frying dandelion flowers the way you might do with squash or daylily blossoms.

The Herb Garden has a recipe for dandelion flower jelly.

AND

You can find a recipe for dandelion wine over at Allotment Heaven.

[1] You could also use rosehips, red/staghorn summac berries, or maybe even thin slices of crab apples, to add sharpness if you are making this in August/September rather than May/June/July. Garden/French sorrel could work for a slightly lemony kick as well.

Salad Nicoise (esque) – Version Two

Okay.

So tonight’s off-the-cuff dinner went as follows:

~*~

INGREDIENTS
14 very-baby potatoes, halved
6 asparagus spears, cut into one-inch lengths
6 bocconcini balls, cut into sixths
4 chunks of marinated artichoke heart, diced
3 cocktail tomatoes, cut into eighths
1 tin of lemon-marinated flaked light tuna
1 mild Italian sausage (already cooked), split length-wise and cut into thin rounds
2 tbsp white onion, diced
1 tsp grainy mustard
1 tsp butter

DIRECTIONS
1) In the bottom of a steamer-style double-boiler, boil the baby potato halves until they are easily pierced with a for – about 10 minutes, probably

2) In the top of the steamer-style double-boiler (or in a sceive set over the potatoes, with a lid on top of everything – which is what I did), steam the asparagus pieces – call it 3-5 minutes (remove when bright green, and continue boiling the potatoes for the full 10 minutes)

3) While the potatoes and asparagus are cooking, prep the artichoke hearts, bocconcini balls, onion, and cocktail tomatoes

4) Remove the asparagus from the heat, and continue cooking the potatoes

5) While the potatoes finish cooking, prep the sausage and toss it in a frying pan with the butter

6) Allow the sausage piece to heat through (about 2 minutes, tops)

7) Remove the sausage from the heat

8) When the potatoes are done, drain off the water, but keep the potatoes in the pot

9) Add the grainy mustard to the potatoes and swirl everything around in the pot until the potatoes are well-covered

10) Evenly divide the potatoes into two bowls (or onto two plates, if you prefer)

11) Heap the bocconcini, onion, artichoke heart pieces, asparagus, on top of the potatoes

12) Evenly divide the lemon-marinated tuna between the two bowls

13) Add the tomatoes and sausage pieces

14) Serve and enjoy

~*~

Salad Nicoise is a good one because, even though all the layering and different components can come across as time-consuming, it acutally works really well as a prep-it-in-fifteen-minutes kind of meal, and it uses up leftovers and miscelaneous “what do I have in the fridge” ingredients really well, too.

Personally, I’d have been really happy if I’d had just a little sour cream to add to this one but, beyond that, it worked out really well and was very tasty. 🙂

I think we’ve got about one more two-person meal that we can get out of our bunch of local asparagus. Between that, the last of the beets, the baby potatoes, and the dandelion greens outside the door… I think we can hold off grocery shopping until the weekend. 🙂

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden. 🙂

Free Local Veggies – Dandelion Edition

So, yesterday, I went out and picked Free Vegetables.
Specifically, I went out and picked dandelion greens from the front yards of various apartment buildings on my street (including my own).

I brought them home, rinsed them, blanched them, and then tossed them (there weren’t that many – I went out late and came back quickly, since my sweetie arrived home shortly after I started foraging) into a frying pan to make the following recipe:

~*~

Pasta Primavera with Sausages and Dandelion Greens

INGREDIENTS
3 already-cooked mild Italian sausages, sliced into rounds
4 cocktail tomatoes, diced
6 asparagus spears, sliced into 1″ lengths[1]
1/2 a flat of pre-sliced button mushrooms
1/4 C blanched dandelion greens
2-3 tbsp minced onion
2-3 tbsp butter
+
1 1/2 C cooked rotini

DIRECTIONS
1) Throw everything except the rotini into a frying pan
2) Sautee until onion is translucent and mushrooms are softened up and browning
3) Add the rotini
4) Heat through, while mixing everything (even distribution is a Good Thing)
5) Serve and enjoy

~*~

Worked like a charm.
If you want to veg*ify it, use pine nuts, soft cheese (like mozzerella or chevre), tempeh, or marinated seitan/tofu in place of the sausages, and add a pinch of chili powder to the mix. Try sesame oil in lieu of the butter, if you’re aiming for vegan.

~*~

Re: dandelion greens as veggies:
Like any salad greens, they are small. You need to gather a LOT to make any kind of a meal from them.
They are also wild food, so they tend towards bitter. Aim for small (young) leaves – even though this takes longer – and blanch them[2] before cooking them into whatever dish you’re making.

NOTE: I’ve had dandelion salad using raw dandelion leaves. They’re fine to eat. Just be aware of the bitterness. Serving them with fat and salt (E.G.: a creamy salad dressing that includes cashew butter and tamari; a handful of fresh cheese curds, soft mozzerella, or shredded old cheddar; a liberal sprinkling of crisply fried bacon bits or slivers of prosciutto) will help to offset any bitterness. Similarly, adding sharp-sweetness (think dried fruit like currants or apples; sweet baby tomatoes[3] or fresh blackberries[3]; or a dressing that includes apple juice instead of vinegar) can play with the slight bitterness of dandelion greens to great effect.

My plan is to hit up a local (*cide-free) park and try to grab a freezer-bag full of the things. That way, I can do them up with bocconcini[4] balls, my few remaining (golden and candy-cane) beets, and maybe some mustard and balsamic vinegar[5] and have a Fabulous Meal that is heavy on the veggies[6]. Huzzah! 😀

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.

[1] Though nowhere near as local as the dandelion greens, that’s for sure. 😉

[2] Quick-cooking to get rid of some of the tanins

[3] If you’re making dandelion salad in August, rather than in May that is. 😉

[4] Much less flavourful than chevre, or even marinated mozzerella – alas – but they’ll do in a pinch and they’re what I have on hand.

[5] I’ve been putting balsamic vinegar on *everything* these days. Not that you can blame me. Mmmmmmm… balsamic vinegar… 😀

[6] Now that Spring (and, pretty much, Summer) is here – it seriously all happened inside of last week – I’m trying to aim for veggie-heavy, starch-and-meat-light dinners FAR more often. Winter is very much a time for perogies and pulled pork and root veggies and roasts and barley-and-mushroom stews featuring leftover critter. Which means Summer needs to be a time when we go light and leafy and eat more raw food and more veggies. This is what I’m aiming for, anyway. It definitely doesn’t mean that barbicue is off the menu. Just that salad (SALAD!!!) is very firmly on it. 🙂