Flavours of Hanoi - VIETNAMESE SALAD SASKATCHEWAN STYLE

Angel hair pasta for two or three
Dipping sauce (see below)
1/2 cup carrots, shaved with a vegetable peeler
1/2 cup English cucumber, cut in thin matchsticks
1/2 cup cabbage, thinly sliced
1 pound ground pork
1/4 cup red onion, thinly sliced and chopped
2 tbsp cilantro, finely chopped
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp fish sauce
Fresh cilantro for garnish, chopped

Dipping Sauce – Mix together:

1 large garlic, minced

1 hot pepper, chopped

1 cup water

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup fish sauce

1/2 cup red-wine vinegar

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Cook pasta in salted water. Drain, rinse and cool. Make dipping sauce.

Boil two cups of water with a dash of salt. Drop in the cabbage and cook one minute. Add carrots and cucumber and cook another minute. Drain and cool in cold water. Add vegetables to the dipping sauce.

Mix together the ground meat, red onion, cilantro, sugar and fish sauce. Season with salt and pepper. Mix very well, until the meat begins to break down and get sticky. Form into ten patties. Cook patties until browned on both sides and cooked through. Add the warm patties to the dipping sauce and vegetables. Cool.

To serve, place the noodles on a platter. Scoop vegetables on top. Place meat patties around the sides. Pour on dipping sauce. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro.

Brad Wall likes chickpeas

Brad Wall has publically divulged his passion for chickpeas. And so he should, seeing as he hails from prime chickpea growing country. In the latest issue of PulsePoint magazine, the premier of Saskatchewan divulges his family's favourite chickpea recipe: Mediterranean Chickpea Salad. I made it and it's delicious (although, given the season, I substituted fresh herbs for dried). Read all about it here.

"Saskatchewan chickpeas are Number 1," declared the Premier (at least, that's what I think he was saying at the moment this image was shot).

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The same issue of PulsePoint included an article about my love affair with pulses, including sample menues. You can read it here.

Chicken x 4 and counting

Meal #3 with my lovely free-range 10 pound farm chicken: Blackened Chicken Breasts on Caesar Salad. Blackened chicken recipe here. Caesar salad recipe here.

Other meals here:
Meal 1
Meal 2
Meal 4

Asian flavours - VIETNAMESE SALAD

Other than the dipping sauce, this dish can be made entirely with Saskatchewan-based ingredients. (Adapted from Cooking Light)

Vietnamese Salad
1/2 of a 450-gram box angel hair pasta
Dipping sauce (see below)
1/2 cup carrots, cut in thin matchsticks
1/2 cup cucumber, seeds removed, cut in thin matchsticks
1/2 cup cabbage, thinly sliced (optional)
1 pound pork or beef, or a combination
1/4 cup green onion, thinly sliced
2 tbsp cilantro, finely chopped
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp fish sauce
2 handfuls of lettuce
Fresh cilantro and mint for garnish, chopped

Cook pasta in salted water. Drain, rinse and cool. Meanwhile, make the dipping sauce (see below).

Boil two cups of water with a dash of salt. Cooking each separately, boil the carrots, cucumber and cabbage just until they start to soften. Remove with a slotted spoon and rinse in cold water. Add vegetables to the bowl of dipping sauce.

Mix together the ground meat, green onion, cilantro, sugar and fish sauce. Add a dash of salt and pepper. Form into ten patties. Cook patties on a grill or skillet until nicely browned and cooked through. Add the warm patties to the dipping sauce and vegetables.

To serve, place the noodles on a platter. Circle with lettuce. Scoop vegetables and meat patties on top. Pour on dipping sauce. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro and mint.

Dipping Sauce – Mix together:
1 large garlic, minced
1 hot pepper, chopped
1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup fish sauce
1/2 cup red-wine vinegar

Newspaper Column - TOMATO MINT SALAD

Published in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, 20 May 2008.

Curiosity got the best of me. I have often seen the mayor and his wife strolling the aisles of the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market and wondered, What do they buy? What does the mayor think as he wanders the market that he envisioned for the untapped potential of south downtown? How does it fit with his vision for Riversdale revitalization? And why is he always wearing a suit? Isn’t Saturday morning a bit early for a suit? Apparently not when you’re the mayor.

When I recently made arrangements to meet Mayor Don Atchison and his wife Mardele at the farmers’ market, he came dressed in a colourful pinstripe shirt and casual pants. He only wears a suit, he says, when he’s dashing to official functions and Mardele insists they stop at the market on the way. As it turns out, they are big fans of the farmers’ market.

“We always try to buy local,” says the mayor. “Mardele is a wonderful cook, as you can tell by looking at me.” It could also be his favourite sugar cookies, to which he makes a beeline the minute we walk in the market door. Mardele’s first purchase is a bunch of fresh-cut pussy willows. She is on the hunt for mint, and for that we head outside.

Since early May, many of the market vendors have moved their stalls outside onto the new paving stone patio. The big overhead doors of the market (it used to be a garage) are open to the fresh air and sunshine. People drink coffee on park benches and the lineup at Grandora Gardens is a block long. A typical summery day at the market.

“I have Middle Eastern blood in me, so I cook with lentils a lot,” says Mardele. “Lentils and brown rice and plain yogurt and a ton of mint. Mint goes in everything.” She tells a wonderful story about her grandmother’ dolmades, a Middle Eastern finger food wrapped in grape leaves. She remembers picking grape leaves with her grandmother at the Forestry Farm in Saskatoon.
“They had incredible grape vines and we would take bags and pick leaves. I was such a little girl but that memory comes racing back.”

The mayor grew up on a traditional prairie diet of meat and potatoes, fresh vegetables and oatmeal cookies. He remembers family outings to the Simpkins farm to buy vegetables in season. All these years later, he still shops from the Simpkins at the farmers’ market.

As we stroll the market, the mayor is stopped by friendly faces to shake his hand and say hello. He takes a lot of pride in the farmers’ market which, in 2007, was the first project to establish itself in the new River Landing development (followed recently by Persephone Theatre). They mayor was supportive of the new farmers’ market, not just because he’s crazy for local vegetables, but because it serves as a magnet to draw people from all over the city to River Landing, a bridge that connects the more affluent parts of Saskatoon with its poorer neighbourhoods on the west side.

He points out that the price of homes near the market has tripled. Patronage at the farmers’ market has also boomed since it moved to Riversdale. “It shows that people believe this is a healthy community again. It’s vibrant and it’s going to be even better,” he says. “The important thing is that Riversdale and downtown are joined together just as it was 102 year ago.”

The market is still surrounded by construction and traffic is congested by roadwork, but sitting on the park bench in the sunshine with the mayor and his wife, it’s easy to believe that vegetables (and cookies and mint) are vital to the future of downtown Saskatoon.

In keeping with Mardele's heritage, here's a salad with Middle Eastern overtones. For more Middle Eastern recipes with Saskatchewan ingredients, click on the label "Middle Eastern" below.

Tomato Mint Salad
2 tomatoes, quartered
1 pita bread
1/4 white or red onion
2 tbsp fresh mint
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
Salt and pepper

Slice tomatoes and pita into bite-sized wedges. Slice onion into paper-thin wedges. Toss onions with tomatoes and bread. Chop mint and stir into tomato mixture. Whisk together olive oil and lemon juice. Add a pinch of salt and pepper. Toss dressing with salad. Marinate 5 minutes and serve.

Newspaper column - NICE SALAD

Publsihed in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, Oct. 22, 2007.

Occasionally, there is a fine line between tenacity and hard-headedness. I admire tenacity in garden vegetables, like the rhubarb that refuses to be cut back and the squash that grows out of the compost.This past spring, my garden was full of renegade spinach in places that had never been planted to spinach. I admired that spunk so much I carefully transplanted it into a proper row.

But when a full-grown tomato plant is still in the garden in mid-October, with its yellowing leaves and spindly stem, and pinkish tomatoes struggling to soak up enough sun to turn red – well, that is sheer hard-headedness. And the hard head is all mine. Perhaps a psychiatrist would diagnose me as suffering from winter denial syndrome, but I can think of no better way to stave off the commencement of winter than to prolong the advancement of the summer garden.

So, every night I go out and cover my tomatoes with an old sheet and every morning I roll back the frosty sheet so the tomatoes can bask in the sun. Somewhere in between the sheets – preferably at dinnertime – I pluck off the ripest of the red tomatoes and eat them – preferably with the salad greens I planted in August which are now at their tender peak. (Lettuce and spinach can take a bit more frost than tomatoes, but I’m not taking any chances; I cover them at night, too.)

A few years ago, my husband and I spent the winter in a medieval mountain town in Italy where, right up to Christmas, gardeners were nurturing their tomatoes on the vine. These tomatoes were usually planted in front of a rock wall and staked to a tall pole, which maximized the warmth and exposure to the sun. It didn’t matter that the stems were spindly and the leaves were almost gone, those last few delicious tomatoes kept on ripening to the bitter end – which came with the first snow on New Year’s Eve.

I decided to try this principle in my own garden here in Saskatoon. I planted a few tomatoes up against the house (grey stucco, sort of like rocks) and attached them to tall stakes. And here it is, the latter half of October, and I am still enjoying fresh tomatoes from the garden. This may be hard-headed obstinacy, but there is method to my madness. Like an Italian grandmother, I prefer my vegetables to be fresh and in season. I want to eat what local gardens have to offer, rather than defy the seasons by buying imported vegetables from other parts of the planet. So, tomatoes and salad greens only when they’re fresh here in Saskatchewan (and, I hasten to add, you can still get both at the Saskatoon farmers’ market).

Here’s a great salad based on the French original called Salade Nicoise (nee-swaz), named for the city of Nice. I made it last week with tomatoes, salad greens and baby fingerling potatoes fresh out of my garden. The French version calls for tuna, but I use leftover Saskatchewan fish when I have it. It turned out so pretty and delicious, I called my version the Nice Salad. This recipe is a meal for two or a first course salad for four.

Nice Salad
3-4 cups of salad greens
Several thin slices of onion
(or 2 sliced green onions)
Two handfuls of baby potatoes, boiled
(or larger potatoes, cooked and quartered)
2-3 small ripe tomatoes, in wedges
3 hardboiled eggs, in wedges
1/2 green pepper, thinly sliced
(or steamed green beans/asparagus in season)
1/2 cup cooked fish

Dressing:
Juice of one-half lemon
2-3 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
Dash of salt and pepper

Whisk together the dressing ingredients. Toss half of the dressing with the salad greens and onion. Arrange the potatoes, tomatoes, eggs and other vegetables around a platter. Drizzle with the remainder of the dressing. Mound the salad greens in the centre. Top the greens with the cooked fish. Serve with a big spoon and two salad bowls.

Hanley Bread Series #5 - LAND-LOCKED CAESAR SALAD

My garden romaine is ready for eating so what else but a Caesar salad. A true Caesar salad has anchovies in it, which I don’t normally have in my fridge, so you might call this version a Land-Locked Caesar. It’s part of the “Hanley Bread Series” – what to do with the free loaf of bread you get for filling up at the gas station in Hanley, Saskatchewan, especially if that loaf of bread sits in your car for a day or two before you get home to use it. For more recipes in the Hanley Bread Series, click the label at the bottom of this post.

LAND-LOCKED CAESAR SALAD
1 egg yolk, room temp.
1½ tbsp lemon juice
1 large clove of garlic, chopped
½ tsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tbsp Dijon mustard
¼ tsp salt
A few grinds of black pepper
½ cup canola oil
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
Romaine lettuce

CROUTONS
Three or four slices of day-old bread
1 big sprig of fresh oregano or parsley
1 big clove of garlic
A few tbsp olive or canola oil

In a blender, mix together the egg yolk, lemon juice, garlic clove, Worcestershire, mustard, salt and pepper until smooth. With the blades running on low, drizzle in the olive oil. When it is thoroughly mixed, pour the dressing into a bowl and stir in half the cheese. Do this ahead of time so the flavours can mingle.

Cut the crusts off the bread and cut the bread into small cubes. In a mortar and pestle (or with a fork) crush together the garlic and oregano until mashed. Stir in enough vegetable oil that it will coat the bread but not make it soggy. Toast the bread cubes in a skillet until browned.

Tear up the romaine and toss with the dressing. If the dressing has become thick, you can thin it with a few drops of milk. A few minutes before serving, toss in the bread cubes and sprinkle on the remaining parmesan cheese.

Delivery service - LENTIL AND CUCUMBER SALAD

There was a bit of a bottleneck at our house this week. Marc Loiselle dropped by with a bag of Red Fife Wheat, just as Al Bennett arrived with 20 dozen eggs and a whole bunch of ground beef. I had to do some tricky rearranging in the freezer, because the next day Karen Dale delivered six chickens. Well, I could only get five into the freezer, which meant we had chicken for supper. I just love it when the grocery store comes to me!

LENTIL AND CUCUMBER SALAD
2 cups cooked lentils
¼ cup green onions, thinly sliced
¼ cup fresh cilantro, chopped (or parsley)
1 cup diced cucumber
¼ cup crumbled feta cheese

Dressing
½ tsp each cumin, coriander, mustard seeds and peppercorns
2 tbsp vegetable oil
½ tbsp balsamic vinegar
½ tsp salt

Mix together the lentils and other salad ingredients. Dressing: toast the whole seeds in a dry frying pan. Grind in a spice grinder or mortar. Mix with the other dressing ingredients and stir into lentils.

Isn't that nice - NICE SALAD

The French make a salad called Salade Nicoise (nees-waz), named for the city of Nice. It’s usually made with tuna, but since that is not a Saskatchewan ingredient, I made it with trout. It turned out very nice, and that is why I’ve called it the Nice Salad. This recipe is for two. You can double and triple it if you like.

2 small boiled potatoes, peeled and cubed
½ green pepper, sliced
10 thinly sliced rounds of onion, or more to taste
Small handful of fresh basil, thinly sliced
2 red tomatoes, cut in wedges
2 hardboiled eggs, cut in wedges
½ cup cooked trout, flaked

Dressing:
Juice of one-half juicy lemon
An equal amount of olive oil
½ tsp Dijon mustard
Dash of salt and pepper

In a bowl, mix together the potatoes, green pepper and onion. Make the dressing by mixing the lemon juice, mustard, salt and pepper. Drizzle in the olive oil, all the while beating with a whisk to form a creamy dressing. Toss the dressing into the potatoes. Let marinate a few minutes or longer. Before serving, mix in the basil. To serve, divide the potato mixture onto two plates. Place the wedges of tomato and hardboiled egg around the edge of the salad. Mound the fish in the centre. Eat! (A Salade Nicoise often includes green beans, but since they are not in season yet, I’ll leave them out my Nice Salad until later in the summer.)

Newspaper Column - HANLEY BREAD SALAD

Published in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, 23 May 2007.

Shopping reward programs are a complete nuisance, as far as I am concerned, unless the reward is instant and edible. Take, for example, a loaf of bread. In Hanley, 60 km south of Saskatoon, the reward for filling up at the Prairie View Gas Station is a free loaf of bread, white or whole wheat. I take this opportunity every time I visit my family just down the highway at Craik.

The bread is not always fresh, since it may have been baked the day before, but it’s big and solid like grandma used to make, and is therefore just as useful a few days later for French toast, grilled cheese sandwiches and bread pudding. But lately I have been using it to make bread salads. Bread salads are a tasty and convenient way to use up day-old bread, which was important in times past before most bread was made in a factory and treated with preservatives to keep it fresh. In Italy, bread salad is called panzanella. In Greece it’s dakos. In Lebanon and Syria, it’s called fattoush. The most common bread salad in Saskatoon is undoubtedly the Caesar Salad, but those hard little croutons that come out of a box hardly qualify as bread in my books.

A few years ago, I produced a documentary on homemade bread for the CBC radio program Ideas, for which the research involved making and eating a lot of bread. I spent time with several home bakers of different cultures discovering the traditions, folklore and spirituality of bread, and learned that in many parts of the world, for many many centuries, bread has nourished not only the body but the soul. Nowadays, we take bread for granted. It is no longer the primary food that fills our tummies, yet we still speak of the bread-winner rather than the fish-winner or the salad-winner or the apple-a-day-winner. Bread still commands that respect.

When I haven’t the time to make my own bread, I often buy it from the Good Spirit Bakery at the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market. Peyton Leavitt and Jonathon Lee bake the bread in a wood-burning brick oven on their farm near Naicam, a process that takes all night. Then they bring it to the market first thing Saturday morning. It’s very rustic and made with local ingredients such as fresh-ground flour, flax and honey. It’s worth a trip to the new farmers’ market venue at River Landing, but go early because the Good Spirit bread often sells out well before noon.

While you’re there, pick up the other ingredients for a good bread salad. Don’t even think of buying these vegetables in a grocery store when you have access to the freshest, most beautiful local produce at the farmers’ market.

This time of year, I make salads with the tiny little greens popping up in my garden. This includes tender dandelion leaves, the cilantro that reseeded itself, mint that grows like a weed and the baby radishes and lettuce that I pulled to thin the rows. If you don’t have access to these fresh micro-greens, you can substitute lettuce (also available at the farmers’ market) or you can omit that ingredient altogether.

Hanley Bread Salad
1 slice of bread per person
2 small tomatoes per person
(a mix of red and yellow tomatoes)
8 slices of English cucumber per person
1 green onion per person
1 tbsp chopped fresh mint
1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
¼ cup baby greens per person

Dressing for two:
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp olive oil
¼ tsp Dijon mustard
Salt and pepper to taste

Trim the bread of crusts and toast until nice and brown. Cool. Cut into chunky cubes. Chop the tomatoes. Put them into a bowl, crushing them with your hands to release their juices. Chop the cucumber, green onion, mint and parsley; toss into the bowl. Whip together the dressing ingredients and mix into the vegetables. (You can do this ahead, giving it time to mingle flavours.) Five minutes before serving, toss in the baby greens and the bread cubes.

Hanley Bread Series #2 - BLT IN A BOWL

This the second in a series of recipes that make the most of the free bread from the gast station in Hanley, Saskatchewan. It’s a BLT (bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwich) served up as a salad. Everyone of these main ingredients is locally produced.

For two:
2 medium red tomatoes
5 slices bacon
3 slices day-old bread
2 cups salad greens
(I used baby greens from the garden – radish, lettuce, arugula, cilantro, sage, mint, chives, dandelion and something with purple leaves that I can’t quite identify.)

Dressing
2 tbsp mayonnaise
½ tsp Dijon mustard
2 ½ tsp milk
Salt and pepper

Chop the tomatoes. Put them into a bowl, squeezing with your hands to release some juices.
Fry the bacon until crisp. Drain on paper towel. Crumble when cool. Add to tomatoes.
Trim the bread of crusts. Toast until brown. Cut into bite-sized cubes.
Mix the dressing ingredients. Pour onto tomatoes and blend.
Arrange the salad greens on two plates or pasta bowls.
Five minutes before serving, add the bread to the tomatoes and toss. Spoon the tomato-bread mixture onto the salad greens. Enjoy your BLT with a fork!

Hanley Bread Series #3 - FATTOUSH

This is the third installment in a series of receipes using the free bread "reward" for filling up at the gas station in Hanley, Saskatchewan.

Fattoush is a bread and vegetable salad. In the Middle East, it would be made with pita bread, but this is Saskatchewan, so I made it with the free loaf I got for filling up at the gas station in Hanley. The cucumber, lettuce, bell pepper and tomatoes came from the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market, and the mint was from my garden.

Cut four slices of hearty day-old bread. Remove crusts. Toast and cut into cubes. Chop the vegetables: cucumber, bell pepper (red, green or both), lettuce, parsley, green onions and mint. Include as much as you like of each one. Make a dressing of ¼ cup olive oil, ¼ cup lemon juice, salt and pepper. Toss all the vegetables with the dressing. A few minutes before serving, toss in the bread. I served this salad with a ground lamb 'pizza' called Sfeeha (see 30 April 2007).

Newspaper Column - WILD RICE & DRIED CHERRY SALAD

Published in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, 20 November 2006.

As we enter the gift-giving season, I would like to extol the virtues of presenting gifts of food. I am not referring to boxed chocolates and imported Christmas cakes in cellophane. I am talking about gifts from our own larders.

I love getting gifts at the best of times, but a gift of food produced by your own hands is the most personal gift of all. No need to buy it, wrap it or return it. Just eat it! Not long ago, my neighbour Andrea popped her head over the fence to give me a container of her crabapple butter. I reciprocated with some wild blueberries I had picked up north. We gave chanterelle mushrooms to Ramesh and Karen and they gave us two bags of their fingerling potatoes. Eva gave us her lingonberry sauce made with wild cranberries. Berni’s dad gave us the most delectable little frozen strawberries in syrup. Gail and Mark gave us ‘biltong’, a South African venison jerky.
My sister-in-law Tallie came begging for a big zucchini to make her favourite chocolate cake. I was happy to oblige.

My list of food-getting and food-giving is long and delicious, and there is nothing I like better to give or receive. I think sharing the produce of our land, and the fruits of our kitchen labour, is the most generous and thoughtful gift we can give from the heart. The only thing that might make it even better is when accompanied by a favourite recipe that makes the most of the gift.

For instance, a reader of this column, Genevieve Salamon, gave me a couple bottles of her homemade vinegars and the technique for making them. One was flavoured with saskatoon berries and the other with herbs from her garden. I was tickled pink. In my quest to celebrate Saskatchewan foods, I have tried to source every staple product, whenever possible, from local sources. So, a couple bottles of flavoured vinegars were much appreciated.

Genevieve says they are easy to make: Purchase pickling vinegar from the grocery store. (She uses pickling vinegar because it has 7% acidity as opposed to 5% in regular vinegar.) Warm the vinegar on the stove or in the microwave. Pour one litre of warm vinegar over 1 cup of saskatoon berries (fresh or frozen), cover and leave at room temperature for 2-3 weeks. After it is well steeped, drain the berries from the vinegar and discard them. Using new berries, fill bottles at a ratio of four parts vinegar to one part berries. Seal and steep another week or two before using.
For herb vinegar, follow the same technique using mixed herbs such as sage, savory, dill, tarragon, coriander seeds, etc.

My mom makes a terrific berry salad with a raspberry vinaigrette. It is her new favourite recipe for family gatherings, and we all love it, too. So, I decided to try it with a vinaigrette made with Genevieve’s saskatoon flavoured vinegar instead. Mom’s salad calls for lettuce, but I substituted wild rice. Instead of dried blueberries and cranberries, I used Saskatchewan sour cherries I had picked and dried myself. And so, in the end, it really wasn’t my mom’s salad anymore, but that is how a new favourite recipe comes to life. I took it to a potluck dinner at our friends, Jo and Kevin’s place, which we had with grilled smoked salmon, pumpkin soup and a bumbleberry pie made by their kids.

I believe it is important and creative to adapt recipes for the foods we have on hand, rather than running out to the grocery store for every little thing. That way, our dinner table is always fresh, in season and if we’re lucky, a real gift of the land.

Not Quite My Mom's
Wild Rice & Dried Cherry Salad
3 green onions, finely chopped
2 cups small broccoli florets
2 cups small cauliflower florets
3 cups cooked wild rice
1 cup dried sour cherries
1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds
1/4 cup thinly sliced almonds

Mix everything together in a serving bowl. Dress with a homemade fruity vinaigrette (I made it with raspberry syryp) or do as my mom does and use a store-bought raspberry vinaigrette.

Newspaper - RED SALAD

This cloumn first appeared in the Star-Phoenix on 21 April 2006.

My friend Murray and I have a friendly competition over tomatoes. Who grows the most, who gets the first red tomato, who has the biggest bragging rights. Murray usually wins. But that doesn’t stop me from trying again summer after summer. I have a competitive spirit when it comes to food. Perhaps it dates to my childhood growing up on the farm at Craik. On fair day, dad would get us up early and head for the garden in search of the most beautiful and uniform examples of each vegetable. They were carefully washed, arranged on silver pie plates and entered in the produce competition.

Sometimes we got a carrot that looked like Pinocchio or a potato in the shape of a duck, but there was a competition for them, too. As I recall, we won a lot of ribbons. Last summer, I entered the bread-making contest at the Wheat Festival in Weyburn. I won a prize for my baguette–second place in a field of two. And a couple of weeks ago, I entered the cherry pit spitting contest at the Cherry Festival in Bruno. So tell me, why are boys such better spitters than girls? My pit spits were–well–the pits.

Murray and I both start our tomatoes from seed. But these are not always the tomatoes that go into my garden. Last year I killed all my seedlings by putting them outside to ‘harden off’ on a windy day. This year, I planted my tomatoes in the garden just before it got so cold and rainy in June. They never grew for a month and they’re still a month behind. I have supplemented them with seedlings from a greenhouse.The first ripe tomatoes I ate this year (other than those from the farmers’ market) came from my neighbour Andrea’s garden. They were delicious in a BLT.

Most years, I grow enough Roma tomatoes that we eat them all winter. I cut a slice off the stem end and freeze them whole in ziplock bags. When thawed, the pulp slips easily out of the skins. They’re terrific in soup or a quick pasta sauce made with olive oil, basil and garlic. In fact, I would never consider buying an "imported" grocery store tomato in winter. They are so pale and tasteless, starved of their nutrients and flavour, I hate to spend my hard-earned pennies on them. After all, what’s eating all about if it isn’t for nourishment and good taste?

I am a big champion of local food, especially fruits and vegetables, that are picked ripe in season and stored for short periods of time. They taste better, and I suspect they have a lot more vitamins, too. And there is no better time of year than right now to buy locally from farmers’ markets or U-picks. For one year, my husband and I made an effort to serve almost nothing but Saskatchewan foods at our dinner table in Saskatoon. Last year at this time, I was busy canning and freezing cherries, pears, rhubarb, apples and tomatoes for those long winter months. We ate well, and felt healthier for it. (You can read about it at HomeForDinner.blogspot.com.)

This year, I am modifying my local food challenge: Everyday, I want to eat something picked or grown myself. So, I’m hoping my tomatoes pick up the pace. And Murray, if your tomatoes are disappearing after dark, it certainly wasn’t me.

RED SALAD
2 beets
2 tomatoes
1 red pepper
1/4 red onion
fresh herbs such as parsley, thyme and cilantro
1 tbsp. olive oil
2 tbsp. lemon juice
salt and pepper

Boil the unpeeled beets in water until they can be pierced through with a sharp knife. Drain. When they are cool enough to handle peel the beets and cut them into a half-inch (1 cm.) dice. Cut the red pepper in half, remove the stem and seeds, and drop into boiling water until the flesh is just soft, about 3 minutes. Cut the pepper and tomatoes to the same size as the beets. Finely chop the onion. Mix the vegetables together in a bowl and, while they are still warm, add the olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste and toss well. Cool. Before serving, add a tablespoon of chopped fresh herbs.

Newspaper - BEET&WALNUT SALAD

This column first appeared in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix on 17 October 2005.

I have turned into a food packrat. If someone says to me, would you like some garden carrots? I say yes without thinking. If someone offers me a handful of beets, I don’t say, No thank you, I have beets in my garden. I say emphatically yes. If friends offer me fruit of any kind from their own trees, I don’t care what it is. I just say okay.

I have become like an anxious squirrel who puts away enough food for three winters. Why? Because I am trying to eat nothing but Saskatchewan foods in my own home, and I’m a tad worried how I’ll manage through the winter months.

It has been easy up ‘til now. I began my Saskatchewan diet in April, just as the rhubarb and herbs were poking through the garden and greenhouse produce was arriving at the farmers’ market. Thanks to the market, my own garden and the generosity of friends and family, I have enjoyed plenty of fruits and vegetables up to now. But what about February? If I can’t go to the store for an apple or a carrot or a head of lettuce, how will I survive?

I take comfort in the fact that the pioneers managed to live through the winter without getting scurvy. They knew how to preserve the bounty of the harvest for the lean months. If they could do it, surely I could, too, with my freezer and canning pot and other modern kitchen conveniences.
My primary goal is not to emulate the pioneers, but to support local agriculture and the health of the environment by eating locally as much as possible for one full year – just to prove it can be done!

To that end, I have been canning and freezing just about everything I get my hands on. My preserves include pears, apples, cherries, saskatoons, strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus and even grapes grown in Saskatchewan. My freezer is full of meat and vegetables. I have buckets of beans, lentils, rolled oats and pearl barley. Should Saskatoon be cut off from the rest of the world by a freak glacier this winter, no one will starve at my house.

My last outdoor dinner party of the summer was, you might say, a real washout. There was a water main break on my street and the taps were turned off for more than a day. Since I was just starting to cook (and hadn’t even cleaned the house yet), I called my guests and we went out to eat instead. As a result, I do not have a wonderful harvest meal to write about here today.
But, had the meal proceeded, this is what we were going to have: cherry tomatoes stuffed with pesto, beet and walnut salad, pasta primavera and for dessert, Black Forest cake made with local cherries.

Just about everything in this meal is from Saskatchewan with a few exceptions, such as the walnuts in the beet salad and the chocolate in the Black Forest cake (and I’m not giving up chocolate!). For all the recipes in this fantasy dinner, go to homefordinner.blogspot.com.


Roasted Beet and Walnut Salad
2 medium beets (or 4 small)
1/3 cup walnut pieces
1T brown sugar
salad greens for two
a nob of goat’s cheese
1/2T sherry or balsamic vinegar
1/2T fruit syrup
3T canola oil
salt

Roast the beets in the oven or cook in the microwave until they can be pierced through with a paring knife. Cool and peel. Heat 1T of water and the brown sugar in a non-stick skillet. Stir in the walnuts. Cook stirring until the liquid evaporates and the nuts are glazed. Place the greens on two salad plates, top with sliced beets, sprinkle on the walnuts and dot with goat’s cheese. (You can use a different cheese such as ricotta or feta.) Combine the vinegar, the fruit syrup (I used a chokecherry syrup made by my friend Laureen) with the oil and a bit of salt. Drizzle over the salad and serve.

Week 16 - FOUR REDS SALAD

Saskatchewan Menu of the Week -- 30 July 2005

Brunch – Scrambled eggs and tomatoes
Dinner – Lentil antipasto. Four Reds Salad. BBQ pork chops.Saskatoon berry pie

FOUR RED SALAD
Four red vegetables make this a very red salad! I can only make it when fresh beets, tomatoes and red peppers are available at the Farmers' Market.

3 small beets
3 medium tomatoes
1 red pepper
1/4 cup chopped red onion
1 clove of garlic
parsley or cilantro leaves
2T olive oil
juice of one lemon
salt and pepper

Bake the beets until soft (in the oven or microwave), peel and chop into a bite-sized dice. Chop tomatoes and red peppers to the same size. Par-boil red peppers in boiling water for about 5 minutes and drain. Mix the vegetables with the chopped parsley or cilantro. Make a vinaigrettes with the oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Pour onto the salad and leave to marinate a couple of hours before serving.

Week 15 - TOMATO & BASIL SALAD

Saskatchewan Menu of the Week -- 26 July 2005

Breakfast -- Scrambled eggs with chopped tomato.
Lunch -- Cold sliced beef on a bun
Dinner -- Tomato and basil salad. Crusty bread.

TOMATO AND BASIL SALAD
No salad screams "summer" like a tomato and basil salad. Made with ripe tomatoes and fresh basil, it is the simplest and yummiest salad in the world. Basil grows like crazy in our climate, so I use lots.

Basil grows abundantly in our climate, so I always have a pot of basil close to the back door. My mom grows more basil in her garden on the farm, so I have plenty to preserve for winter cooking. I just love the aroma of basil in the middle of February - it sparks the distant memory of summer's heat. (See the recipe for BASIL CUBES on 19 March 2005.)

For the salad, slice or chop the tomatoes according to your preference. Chop or tear a handful of basil and sprinkle it onto the tomatoes. Make a vinaigrette with oil and vinegar (I use balsamic vinegar). Pour onto the tomatoes. Sprinkle on salt and pepper to your taste. For added variation, add tiny cubes of mozzarella cheese. Use the bread so soak up any vinaigrette left on your plate. Good to the last drop!

Newspaper - July - TABOULEH SALAD

Published in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, 18 July 2005

We may be far from the Mediterranean Sea, but we’re not that far from the Mediterranean diet. Many of the foods that form the diet in Mediterranean countries like France, Greece, Spain and Morocco are also grown right here in Saskatchewan.
Consider the tomato. It was cultivated in South America by the Aztecs and taken to Europe by Spanish explorers in the 1500s. Lentils are a staple food in Mediterranean countries like Egypt and France. In fact, they are now eating lentils from Saskatchewan, which has become one of the largest producers in the world.
I began exploring the Mediterranean connection more than a decade ago when I asked my mom to grow some basil in her garden on the farm. To me, basil is the essential summer herb. It goes perfectly with tomatoes and lentils and many other Mediterranean dishes. If I could have only one fresh herb, it would be basil.

I had grown it in pots on a sunny balcony, but I had no idea if it would survive on the dry windy prairie. Well, it thrived. That row of basil grew so tall I picked it into black garbage bags and gave some to all my friends. So here’s my point – eating Saskatchewan foods does not mean a meat-and-potatoes-and-coleslaw diet. Saskatchewan foods lend themselves to many culinary traditions from around the world.

This is good news, because for one full year I have pledged to serve Saskatchewan foods almost exclusively at my own dinner table. I began in mid-April, and I’m happy to report that I am eating better and healthier than ever. I am searching out new sources of food, reading labels in the grocery store and getting to know some farmers. I am even the happy recipient of gifts of food. Not long ago, my neighbor Andrea presented me with a container of frozen apple butter from her own tree. It went straight into a fruit cobbler.

Recently, I hosted my bookclub. We always have a potluck meal and since we had just read "Tender is the Night", a novel set in the south of France, I decreed that the dinner theme would be Mediterranean foods made with Saskatchewan ingredients. Before long, there was an email in my inbox: "Help! What on earth do you mean? Examples please." So I listed off some foods that we have in common – grains and lentils, tomatoes and herbs, cheese and chicken, pasta and bread, etc, etc.

My friends are real troopers. They came with excellent dishes that were – or could be – made with Saskatchewan ingredients. We had: arugula salad, lentils with fresh herbs, Lebanese tabouleh salad, French gratin of cauliflower, Greek spanikopita and Italian margarita pizza (tomatoes, basil and cheese).

Just the other night, we had our friend Ian and his mom for a nice dinner on the patio. I found a pasta recipe in a cookbook by the godmother of Italian cooking, Marcella Hazan. It called for red, yellow and green peppers, ground veal and fresh pasta. I bought greenhouse peppers from the farmers’ market, made pasta with fresh farm eggs, and substituted ground moose for the veal.

The moose came from Jeff, an avid hunter. When he heard that I was eating Saskatchewan foods, he showed up on our doorstep with 30 pounds of frozen moose. Gotta love friends like that!

Tabouleh Salad
This is the national salad of Lebanon, pronounced ta-BOO-lee. I made it with pearl barley from the Daybreak Farm at Estevan, farmers’ market tomatoes and fresh greens from my own garden.

1 cup pearl barley
1 bunch green onions
2 bunches parsley
2 bunches mint
4 tomatoes
1/4 cup canola or olive oil
Juice of 2-3 lemons
salt and pepper

Soak the barley in plenty of water until it is chewable but not too soft, a few hours. It should double in size to about 2 cups. Drain. Finely chop the herbs and onions. Cut the tomatoes in bite-sized pieces. Mix everything together and enjoy.

Newspaper - BAVARIAN POTATO SALAD

My first "Home for Dinner" column in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, April 25, 2005.

I have been watching for one – and only one – sign of spring. For me, spring officially begins the first day I see something green growing in my garden. This year, that day was March 31. The snow was barely melting off a sunny spot of earth when I spied the unmistakable thin line of tiny sprouts. I planted those seeds last October, just before the first snow, and there they were, insuppressible and bursting with life. I can’t remember what I planted. I think it was arugula, lettuce, spinach and radish, but that mystery is half the fun of watching them grow.

The next special day – a true harbinger of summer – is the first day I eat something green from my garden. This year, that day was April 16. I know we’re still in for one last blast of winter, but I don’t care, because my spirits have been elevated to summer by that first fresh bite. It was the chives. Chives come up year after year, so they get a head start on the seeds. I discovered the chives were sprouting as I raked the leaves off the garden. I immediately got some scissors and cut the sprouts for dinner.

This would be a revolutionary dinner for me. For several months of winter, I had been planning to embark on a culinary adventure of sorts, an adventure that would begin the first day I savoured something green from my garden. For one year, I pledge to eat almost exclusively the foods of Saskatchewan. I will grow my own, share with others, discover new sources of local foods, buy directly from the farmers who produce it and develop recipes that make the most of it.

I asked my husband, What should I call this culinary adventure? "Austerity," he offered. "Monotony. Privation."

Well, nothing could be further from the truth. Thanks to science, technology and ingenuity, Saskatchewan is producing a greater variety of foods than ever thought possible a century ago.
I call it "Home for Dinner" because it challenges me to put local food on my dinner table. Here are four good reasons to be "Home for Dinner":

Local produce is usually picked just before it’s sold so it’s fresher, tastes better and the nutrients are not depleted. Eating foods as they are available in season ensures you’re always eating the freshest food possible. Local food is less likely to have been picked unripe, stored, hauled, and treated with preservatives, pharmaceuticals and other agents. It’s better for the environment. Think of all the fuel used to truck lettuce from Mexico and bananas from Costa Rica. Farming is a tough business, especially if you’re small and trying to do something unique on your land. Support the farmers who are producing good healthy food and keep your food dollars in the local economy.

It just so happens that April 16 was a Saturday, the day of the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market, at which my husband picked up a package of fresh weisswurst. This is German for "white sausage", a fat pale mild sausage we ate in monastery beer gardens in Bavaria with warm potato salad. Next column, I’ll give my "Home for Dinner" rules – and when I can break them!

BAVARIAN POTATO SALAD

Boil 2lbs of medium-sized potatoes until they are soft enough to pierce with a sharp knife. Cool slightly, peel and thinly slice. While the potatoes are cooking, sauté a small finely chopped onion in a good dollop of butter. When the onions are soft, mix them with 1C of hot chicken stock, 2T of white wine vinegar, 4T of vegetable oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir the warm sliced potatoes into the dressing and toss well. Serve the salad warm sprinkled with fresh chives.