Saturday, April 13, 2013

thank GOD for olive oil!!!

A Warm Veggie Salad which ended up being a Soggy Bread Salad
 Lenten, with Olive Oil

1/2 head cauliflower, broken into florets
1 red bell pepper, julienned
1 red onion, sliced thinly into half rings
1 clove garlic, minced
1 can artichoke hearts, quartered
equivalent to 1 bag (?) of greens (I used Trader Joe's "Power Greens" with baby chard, kale and spinach.)
salt
freshly ground pepper
red pepper flakes

Saute garlic in lots of olive oil. Add the other vegetables and cook until the cauliflower isn't too crunchy. I added the juice from my can of artichokes and some water to help it soften. Salt helps too. Alternatively, you could roast the vegetables or brown them separately in the skillet. Add the artichoke hearts and greens to the warm veggies. Cover to soften greens.

1/2-3/4 cup tahini
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/4-1/2 cup olive oil
just... a bunch of cilantro

Mix in a food processor, or by hand (in which case you should mince the cilantro, which I hate doing.)

Toss the salad and the dressing together.

We started eating this with some good bread on the side, but realized how much time we were wasting when we could have been shoving more bread in our faces. So we tore up pieces of bread and tossed them in the salad. It was good for lunch, and it was better for a just-got-home-from-the-museum snack after a few hours.

I don't mean for this to be a recipe blog. (It's more of a "suggestion" blog if anything.) I wonder if it's not right to post so much about food during Lent. On the other hand, you do have to eat, and maybe some new ideas will help you make it through without going crazy. I always love going to the meals after Pre-Sanctified Liturgies and just eating other people's beans.

I end up posting about food so often because everything else just feels too private. I'm not into sharing intimate details about my marriage or family life; posting pictures of my artsy homemaking ways feels like gloating; writing about the struggles of teaching in a very small Orthodox school would just be inappropriate; confessing my sins ain't happening; and I don't really have any wisdom to share with others. So what am I even doing?

I will say that today we went to the art museum. We like their espresso drinks and the vaulted ceilings. We didn't look at paintings today, but I did visit the gift shop. I wanted to buy some beautiful note cards. I found some by Georgia O'Keefe and this is the dopiest thing, but they made me cry. And it's sort of too private for me to explain why.

 




1 comment:

  1. But just to be clear, it was not the ....feminine.... flower paintings that did it for me.

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