Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Fruited Spinach & Arugula Salad, Strawberries With Oranges



Just so you know that we really do eat some fresh, uncooked things (usually a salad that starts the meal), here's today's first-course luncheon salad.

FRUITED SPINACH AND ARUGULA SALAD

I mixed some argula in with some spinach, added small slices of one of those lovely Ontario-grown little red McIntosh apple, a small handful of raisins, three dried apricots (chopped), some slices of green bell pepper, a few slivers of sweet onion,a few sliced water chestnuts (for the texture and the flavour), and a couple of handfulls of yellow cherry tomatoes (so sweet!), halved. I think that was all ;) Everything was organic except the apricots and the water chestnuts.

For the dressing (remember, I'm stubborn and try not to use oil), I mixed balsamic with seasoned rice vinegar, added maybe half a teaspoon of mirin, about 1 tsp of the juice from a jar of ginger, and a tsp of a nice unsugared organic apricot jam. I whisked it all together, poured it on, tossed the salad, and there we were - surprised and delighted as well as hungry.

We usually have fruit after lunch (lunch is our main meal of the day, so we make a bigger deal of it than otherwise), sometimes just from our never-empty fruit basket, sometimes sliced into a fruit salad of some kind (although more rarely). Today my husband made -

STRAWBERRIES WITH ORANGES



This was so good. He sliced fresh organic strawberries into a bowl, added the zest of 1 organic valencia orange, the orange itself (peeled, seeded and chopped), a little sweetener, and a Tbsp Grand Marnier. It was a lovely fresh ending to a nice light meal.

I should add that I also like strawberries with chopped mango, strawberries with chopped mint, strawberries with more strawberries, etc. etc. etc.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That strawberry salad looks great! What was the sweetener you used? I am just curious...I love reading your blog!

Courtney

River said...

Well, for sweetening fruit we use either stevia (usually in the powdered form) if it is I who am mixing the concoction together or Splenda (an artificial sweetener, which we also have up the cupboard for occasional use) if my husband is making it. It's not that either of us dislikes the other sweetener, it's just a matter of habit :)