My sweet seeeesta and our friend are coming to visit this weekend! I’m so excited and roasting a huge chicken while I watch every car that passes by. It’s very lovely that they are coming for the weekend since it’s a 10 hour drive. We plan on checking out some hot springs, going fishing and hiking up to the Jumbo Valley, an absolutely stunning mountain pass home to the worlds largest Grizzly habitat. An old guy in town told us a funny story today, he was at the gas station, eating a muffin and bent down to check his tire pressure. He put the muffin down on his trunk and while he was fiddling with the tire, a bear stole his muffin and brushed up against him non-chalantly. Lots of bears around these parts, so hopefully we’ll see a Grizz on our hike, just not too close…
I ripped the last of the kale out of the garden today as the frost is coming soon. What to do with a big bunch of fresh kale? Make a fabulous salad of course, loaded with honey crisp apple slices, parmesan cheese and a tarragon-mustard vinaigrette. It will pair beautifully with our balsamic roast chicken and crispy roasted potatoes.
Even squash haters like roast squash, especially of the delicata and acorn varieties. When these beauties are in season I like to occupy my entire oven with their sliced presence, roast until their skin bursts golden and adorn every meal with a touch of fall.
Just go ahead and drool all over the computer…it’s okay, really. The star of the show here is the tahini lemon sauce, creamy smooth sesame tahini is such a versatile ingredient. This sauce is not only great on salads and vegetables but also really nice with grilled chicken or white fish, as a dipping sauce for roasted potatoes and yam fries, added to vegetable soups or just smothered on a chunk of sourdough. Make a big batch and save moola on pre made salad dressings, seriously if you are into having a lower grocery bill then you need to start making your own dressings and sauces. The pre made stuff is not only expensive but usually loaded with additives, preservatives and unhealthy oil like canola and soy (yes, even the organic ones!).
Tahini is a power food, it’s higher in protein than most nuts and packed with important minerals like calcium, magnesium, potassium (potassi-yum!) and iron. Seeds are a lot easier to digest than nuts, you don’t have to soak them forever to make them more absorbable which is a huge timesaver. Sesame is one of the most nutrient rich seeds you could eat. I sprinkled some black sesame seeds on the salad, which are really high in iron AND they look cool, right?
Roasted Squash Salad with Lemony Tahini Sauce + Feta
Author: Chantelle
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4
You can easily double or triple the recipe and keep a jar of this sauce on hand in the fridge. It lasts about a month. Use whatever fresh local veggies are on hand, this is just what I had available.
Ingredients
1 acorn squash, cut into ½ inch slices
1 delicata squash, cut into ½ inch slices
1 beet, cut into ½ inch slices
a few radishes, sliced
a handful of cherry tomatoes
small chunk of feta
a few handfuls of local greens- lettuces,kale,arugula- you name it!
2 Tbs. Tahini
1 whole lemon, juiced, seeds removed
2 Tbs olive oil
2 garlic cloves
1 Tbs honey
1 tsp worcester sauce or 1 anchovy filet
½ tsp sea salt
generous amount of fresh cracked pepper
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400F
Lay out the squash and beets on a roasting tray and drizzle with a bit of olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt. Bake for 45 min. turning halfway through.
In a blender or food processor, add the tahini, lemon, garlic,honey,worcester, salt and pepper and blend until smooth and creamy.
Assemble the greens on a large plate or in a large mixing bowl, top with your veggies, roasted squash, beet,crumbled feta and a generous amount of tahini sauce.
Oh yes, this salad is a rainbow of yum- crunchy, zingy, and super satisfying. There are times when I look in my fridge and think I have nothing and it’s like this separate section of my brain chimes in and goes, but wait, you have cabbage, you have leftover roast chicken, you have sesame seeds and carrots, you have yourself an epic Korean style salad! Have I ever told you how much I love kimchi? It seriously is one of my favourite fermented foods, the delightful umami flavour is hard to compare to anything else. You can buy it at most asian markets and health food stores and if you haven’t tried it I urge you to give it a go. Making it from scratch is a little more involved than a basic ferment like sauerkraut but well worth it! I have a recipe for making your own kimchi here, check it out.
I’m not going to lie…the cabbage you see has been waiting to be used for some time now. Thankfully cabbage lasts a long time, because I tend to use it sparingly. Then there are times when the satisfying crunchy nature of cabbage is the only thing that will do. I like to break it down yo’ by really getting in there and massaging the dressing into it, along with the kimchi, this helps make it easier to digest and really helps the umami flavours work their magic.
2 C cooked chicken torn into bite size pieces (I used leftover roast chicken)
4 C purple cabbage, shredded
4 C napa cabbage, shredded
3 medium size carrots, grated
½ C kimchi
2 Tbs sesame seeds (preferably toasted)
1 garlic clove, minced
1 inch piece of ginger, finely chopped
1 small chile, deseeded and finely chopped, OR 1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp lime juice
½ tsp fish sauce
1 tsp tamari or coconut aminos
1 Tbs rice wine vinegar
2 Tbs olive oil
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
2 tsp coconut sugar or honey
1 green onion stalk, finely chopped
2 eggs, fried to your preference (optional)
Instructions
Combine cabbages, carrot,kimchi and sesame seeds in a large bowl and set aside.
Mix together garlic, ginger, chile, lime juice, fish sauce, tamari, rice wine vinegar, olive oil, sesame oil and sugar, whisk together until well slightly emulsified (you could also do this in a blender)
Add half the dressing to cabbage and massage it in with your hands until cabbage starts to soften.
Fry your eggs and warm up your chicken in a frying pan with some of the leftover dressing.
Top with chicken, a fried egg, green onion and a generous drizzle of dressing.
This is so extravagant, I want to eat this brazil nut pesto on absolutely everything! Why haven’t I thought of this before? The magical mineral rich nut is the ideal candidate when you don’t have/want pine nuts. Sunflower seeds, yes, very yummy substitute as well as almonds, but they still don’t equate to the awesomeness of selenium rich brazil nuts. Its pesto season, my friends, and I am lapping it up and licking the spoon, I suggest you do the same.
Potato salad is quintessential summer food and the addition of pesto is bloody good. Adding in little additional greens helps to mop up extra saucy goodness, crunchy onion,kale and swiss chard were on hand and worked beautifully. New potatoes or baby potatoes work the best since they are so tender and the texture is just melt in your mouth. Check out your local farmers market for the best of the best, after all, food that grew close to home always tastes better. Today at the store I needed some garlic and there was a sale bag full of organic garlic imported from Chile for 3.50, then there was a brilliant purple hued russian heritage variety grown locally and each bulb was the same price as the entire bag from Chile. Although I go throw garlic like a mad woman, I had to get the local stuff, I know it’s a million +1 times better. Still, this discrepancy in local fare costing far more than imported needs to change. Maybe a time will come when we can barter skills and trade commodities instead of fueling this global trade economy, because lets face it, we’re not doing the environment any favours, nor ourselves. I’m not saying that it will ever be 100%, there are plenty of useful things we can only get from other countries, but when our food security is at stake, or worse, doesn’t exist at all, something has got to give.
It’s the little things that count, one person cannot change the world, but collectively we can shift this paradigm. Our hearts know this beautiful world is possible. A new UN report says small scale organic farming is the only wayto feed the world, that’s right, not GMO’s and mono crops, humanity has always known this. Our amnesia is only temporary, as more reports like this start to come out it becomes blatantly obvious that we need to reconnect with the earth & remember, we are all connected. Thanks for reading friends.
1/2 C grated parmesan cheese, or nutritional yeast for vegan version
1/4 tsp sea salt
fresh cracked pepper
For the potato salad
1 lb new potatoes
1/4 of a red onion, thinly sliced
3 leaves swiss chard, kale or other greens, finely chopped
1/2 C mayonnaise
1/2 C pesto
Instructions
Pesto
In a blender or food processor, start by adding the garlic, brazil nuts, basil and cheese, start blending and slowly add the olive oil until mixture starts to become smooth, add salt and pepper.
Potato Salad
Boil water for the potatoes and cook until tender. Allow potatoes to cool before proceeding.
Mix the pesto and mayonnaise together, or leave the mayonnaise out for vegan
Add the cooled potatoes, kale, chard and onion to a large bowl and incorporate the pesto-mayonnaise until everything is well coated. I like to use my hand and mash the potatoes up a bit so that they absorb the most sauce.
Summer is the season to invent delicious new salad dressings. The bounty of veg is just too much to stick with the go-to “salad hug”, everything needs to be complimented, just so. Bring out the best of those juicy little cherry tomatoes, a little salty zing to that fresh cucumber, a breath of fresh air to those beets that’ve been underground, until now. It can’t hurt to add a touch of good asiago or parmesan cheese to the mix, something about balsamic just begs to be indulged with cheese. Roasted sunflower seeds are your ally when it comes to making something amorphous taste rich and full. This recipe for creamy sunflower seed balsamic dressing is vegan (if you don’t put cheese in your salad!) and paleo but you’d never know it, for real. It’s a trick of a dressing that even the pickiest child should love.
Colorful salad components will vary based on what’s in your fridge. Mine consisted of kale, baby lettuce greens, shredded beets & carrot, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, red onion, quick pickled radish and asiago cheese. It was gooooood. The next day I had just a big bunch of greens with this creamy balsamic and an egg on top, yum. The recipe makes 500mL or 16 oz. worth of dressing, which lasts for quite a few salads. Unless your like me and enjoy more dressing than actual vegetables sometimes…
Yesterday was a little trip to our new home in Kaslo. Things I noticed: everyone was fishing- this is a good sign, the neighbours across the street had a visitor who road their horse over and tied it up beside the front door (we should go back to that mode of transport, how fun would that be), people like babies (phewf) and basically the best view from a swing set on the planet (wish we had a photo), there are plenty of medicinal and edible plants everywhere. Looking forward to nestling in to a gem of a place.
1/2 C water (maybe a bit less depending on how thick you want the dressing)
generous amount of fresh cracked pepper
Instructions
Heat a skillet on high for about 1 minute, turn the heat to low and add sunflower seeds to the pan, let them get nice and brown, this only takes a few minutes, make sure to stir them around so they're all evenly toasted.
Allow the seeds to cool.
Add all ingredients except water to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth, adding water as you go to achieve the desired consistency.
Rainy Days. I clutch my baby to my chest as we stare out the open door, smelling the downpour, staring at the falling water, hearing the roaring thunder. We are both in awe, one moment he is crying, the next he is entranced. I am grateful for this water, the plants soak it up, the river flows more freely. But I wish to send some blessed rain to the people who need it most, to parched soils, and mouths, all over this crazy world. May rain come and bring you all sound sleeps and excuses to loll in a warm place, contemplate.
Hey I'm Chantelle, my alter ego would be a mermaid if I wasn't such a terrible swimmer. I love writing authentically and cooking in my pyjamas. My favourite pastimes include eating avocados, travelling the world and hanging out with a toddler.
