Salads for summer

For me summer is all about messing around with salads and create some new things. I am feeling very virtuous this week as my diet has been a picture of health since last week when we ate out and drank far too much for my now delicate constitution. We have eaten in every night since then - mainly variations on a theme. Quinoa salads, rice salads.

There was a gorgeous chickpea salad one night from a British book I had called Good Food Magazine : 101 Veggie Dishes. I suggest buying this book if you can get hold of it - its not expensive and is full of fantastic things.

Indian Chickpea (Garbanzo bean) salad

6 tbsp olive oil
3 garlic cloves
2 red chillies, seeded and sliced
4tsp cumin seeds, lightly crushed
2 x 400g cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
3 tomatoes, halved, seeded and diced
zest and juice of a lemon

For the salad:
25g/1oz cilantro
half a cucumber cut in batons
1 medium red onion, sliced
4oz/100g baby spinach leaves

1) Fry the garlic, chillies, and cumin in 5 tbsp of the oil over a medium heat for 10 minutes taking care not to burn the garlic. Add chickpeas and heat through for 5 minutes.

2) Add tomatoes, lemon zest and juice. Season and set aside. Toss together the salad ingredients and divide between serving plates. Spoon chickpea over the top.

Serves 4.

This is not the exact recipe as it says to have it with naan bread too but obviously I left that part out and I layered some quinoa on top of the salad before spooning on the chickpeas.

Salads with a grain as a base are great for lunch the next day too, you just need to make a little extra. I always find it hard to know what to have for lunch as sandwiches are now off the menu.
Mostly I try to eat leftovers but if that is not an option, I have some of the following things:
- rice cakes with cheese and chutney
- I make a batch of say fritters, lentil burgers, that kind of thing and freeze. You can pull them out of the freezer in the morning and take to work with a salad.
- salads
- if it has to be fast food, chipotle does a great Vegetarian Burrito Bol - all the elements of a burrito without the wrap, also great because you can choose to leave out the sour cream and cheese!

My fantastic new blender arrived on Monday so smoothies are back on. Yeah! Stopped at the organic shop on the way home today to stock up on fruit. I now have a fridge full of Strawberries, blueberries, rasberries. I also got some bananas and a pineapple. Plenty for smoothies every day!

Smoothies!

My blender broke the other day, so I have not had any smoothies for a week. However, while waiting for the new one to arrive from ebay I got withdrawl symptoms and some about to go off fruit so I broke out the old hand blender which is not as good but does the job.
I have created a gorgeous smoothie with said implement.
Ingredients:
half a block of frozen acai (I found this in my local organic shop)
some blueberries
4 large strawberries
splash of OJ
splash of ice water.

Delish! I haven't named it yet, so any suggestions welcome.

Have also made carrot soup today with the remainder of a large bag of carrots which is also about to go off. I put half a large onion, one garlic clove sliced, olive oil and saute for about 5 mins. Add chopped carrots and a pint of stock. Simmer until vegetables are tender enough to be blended easily.

Birthdays!

Its been a great week so far for birthdays. It is my birthday week so some of the rules are going out the window, but if you can't break a rule on your birthday when can you? Went out to Georgia Browns on Tuesday for a friends birthday. This is a great DC restaurant featuring southern style food. I had the vegetarian sampler, which was rice and beans, succotash, fried green tomatoes. Okay, I know they're fried in batter but it was a birthday party. Food was really tasty. Had a glass or two of wine but what the hell.
Yesterday we went to a 4th July BBQ. I ate loads of salad and a couple of chicken sausages, without the bun, I just can't resist BBQ food. Then loads of fresh fruit for desert. Yummy. However, it was all I could do to resist the cake and cookies, but I did.

The local organic shop has just started selling these coconut covered dates. Bought some yesterday and they are really tasty. Great to satisfy that sweet craving.

Then yesterday was my birthday! Went to Ardeo in Cleveland Park. Lovely meal. There was nothing veggy that was wheat-free so I went for tuna with a lentil salad and leeks. Tasty.
I did succumb to panna cotta for dessert and half a bottle of wine but it was my birthday - whats a girl supposed to do?!

Today's lunch was Quinoa salad. I am trying to make up for a few bad days with something perfectly healthy. I never know what to do with Quinoa really and haven't found a really great recipe for it yet so I normally make it up. Todays was a dressing of olive oil, red wine vinegar and dijon mustard. I whisked all this together in the bottom of a salad bowl. Then added baby spinach leaves, cherry tomatoes, red onion, feta cheese. Then added the cooked quinoa and mixed it all together. It was really tasty. I used 1/2 cup of quinoa and that was plenty for lunch.

Weekend Food

I always find the weekends particulary hard. Its difficult to think of what to eat for a quick Saturday lunch that's not a sandwich. We eat out a lot at weekends and its often a challenge. This weekend, however, we stayed in for dinner on friday and I made Greek style lentil burgers. I adapted the recipe from one found in 'Vegetarian Times' magazine. I used oats, baked in the oven for about 10 minutes instead of breadcrumbs. The burgers were really tasty and substantial enough to not miss having a bun with them. Had a radish and fennel salad to go with it, a la Jamie Oliver (food network website). Really tasty, and crunchy. Saturday lunch we had some of the leftover burgers. Then went to a BBQ saturday night. They served some lamb and lots of salad and veggies which was great. As I am not a 100% vegetarian, I did eat some lamb because it looked so tasty I couldn't resist, and veggy burgers turned out slightly cardboard like and were a lot less appetizing. I am still searching for a veggy burger or sausage which cooks well on a BBQ.

I have started making my own granola. Its dead easy. Oats, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, ground flax seeds, ground nuts. Bake it all in the oven till golden - about 15 minutes. Then warm up some maple syrup about 30 secs till it takes on a more runny texture. Pour it into the oat mixture. Then into a container and refrigerate. I add some raisins at this stage too. Its really tasty. The only problem with this is that you kind of have to have milk with it and I don't like to have that much dairy, so this is not really an everyday breakfast for me.

My usual breakfast consists of oatmeal - half a cup of oatmeal to one cup of liquid. The liquid I use is mostly water with a splash of milk - I find it quite bitter with just water. I add maple syrup, some ground flax seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and blueberries if I have them.
This is great in the fall and winter but not so appealing in the heat and humidity of a DC summer. So, in the summer what you can do is soak the oats overnight in apple or orange juice then top with whatever you like in the morning.