Salad Night!

Sorry about the late delivery! We owe great thanks to Martha Stewart this week.

Quinoa-and-Apple Salad with Curry Dressing
Per serving: 304 calories, 14 g fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 38 g carbs, 154 mg sodium, 8 g protein, 5 g fiber

INGREDIENTS
Serves 4.

1/4 cup raw whole almonds
1 cup white quinoa
1 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon finely chopped shallot
1 teaspoon curry powder
1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons dried currants
1 small McIntosh apple, cut into 1/8-inch-thick wedges
1/4 cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves, coarsely chopped, plus more for garnish

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spread almonds on a rimmed baking sheet; toast in oven until lightly toasted and fragrant, about 7 minutes. Let cool; coarsely chop nuts.
Rinse quinoa thoroughly in a fine sieve; drain. Bring 2 cups water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add quinoa; return to a boil. Stir quinoa; cover, and reduce heat. Simmer until quinoa is tender but still chewy, about 15 minutes. Fluff quinoa with a fork; let cool.
Whisk together honey, shallot, curry powder, salt, and lemon juice in a large bowl. Season with pepper. Whisking constantly, pour in oil in a slow, steady stream; whisk until dressing is emulsified. Add quinoa, currants, apple, mint, and nuts; toss well. Garnish with mint.

White-Bean Salad with Zucchini and Parmesan

INGREDIENTS
Serves 4.

2 cans (15 1/2 ounces each) cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
3/4 pound zucchini (about 2 small), trimmed, quartered lengthwise, and thinly sliced on the diagonal
4 ounces green beans, trimmed and thinly sliced on the diagonal (3/4 cup)
2 ounces fresh Parmesan cheese, crumbled (1/2 cup)
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, torn
Grated zest and juice of 2 lemons
1 tablespoon olive oil
Coarse salt and ground pepper

DIRECTIONS

In a medium bowl, place cannellini beans, zucchini, green beans, Parmesan, basil, lemon zest and juice, and oil; season with salt and pepper. Toss to combine.

Squash Frittata, Wheat Bread, Carrot Medley

Squash Frittata

This is one of our family favorites we adopted from a Martha Stewart recipe and it's pretty low fat too. We like frittatas over quiche since you save calories and fat from skipping the crust.

Onion, squash, zucchini sliced 1/8 in

Feta cheese, crumbled

Dill

6 eggs

Milk

Garlic

Olive oil

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Place onion in bottom of baking dish with a few glugs of olive oil, bake for 10 minutes. Add remaining veggies and sprinkle with cheese.

Reset oven to 400 degrees. While oven cools, whisk together eggs, milk, garlic, S&P, and dill. Pour over veggies and bake for 20 minutes until the eggs have puffed.

Wheat Bread

Chris is the bread baker of the house. He started with a free bread machine from Freecycle but has moved on after great success with Bread Alone by Daniel Leader. We checked it out from the library numerous times and it definitely changed his bread making for the good. He got Local Breads by the same author for Father's Day and this was the whole wheat sourdough. And if you ever want a pinch...we've always got a batch of sourdough starter on the counter-top that Chris would be happy to share.

Carrot Medley

Chris and I had a date at Monica Pope's T'afia in Houston last weekend. She was on Top Chef Masters so we had to try her restaurant out! I ordered this carrot side dish and was shocked with how tasty and simple it was. This was my attempt to re-make it and I was happy with the results.

Carrots, sliced and steamed

Sun-dried tomatoes

Parsley, chopped

Pepperocinis, sliced

Heat olive oil and add ingredients with S&P to taste.

Total cost for 4 families = $25

Tofu Egg Salad, Brown Rice Salad, Veggies and Ranch

Tofu Egg Salad

Heather and Courtney have made tofu spreads recently and I loved them on sandwiches and then eating the leftovers with crackers. I think this is such a tasty, easy, and light summer treat. I love egg salad and was really happy at how similar this tasted with less fat and no cholesterol.

Crumbled tofu, scallions, chopped celery, a little miracle whip, dijon mustard, fresh dill, apple cider vinegar, tumeric, garlic powder, S&P.

Brown Rice Salad

I lost the directions to my rice cooker - so I made this on the stove. It turned out really gummy but since it was going into a cold salad I just rinsed it in a wire mesh sieve and was okay with the resulting texture. I reduced the oil in the recipe by half.

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/505

Veggies and Ranch

The third dish has to be a no-brainer for co-op to not kill me - so tomatoes, carrots, and ranch it was!

Total cost for 3 families = $17

Our first go at it...

Better late than never. A late post about what we made yesterday:
*Tomato salad (tomatoes from the yard, basil from the yard, mozzarella we had nothing to do with)
Cost: probably about $7 once I add the balsamic and oil.
*Three corn grits (from a piece about a vegan chef in Oprah's magazine). I'm so glad Zoe said she liked it. We didn't think much of it. It had grits, cornmeal, fresh corn, ground cashews, and spinach. Corn must be coming into season, it looked great. It was about $1o to make.
*Cucumber salad (mint, cucs, yogurt, garlic, salt). It was $5 to make. And easy. And good.
*Watermelon salad (for dessert). That was our favorite. It was just watermelon chunks in a dressing of lime zest, lime juice and sugar. Maybe $5 to make.

Guesstimated total: $27

We learned a lot about getting portions right. We thought we'd made a lot more grits than we actually had once we had it portioned out to the Pyrex.