Two Salads

We made two salads for a party: one an apple salad and the other a green salad.

The apple salad had, well apples, diced prunes, raisins, chopped walnuts, and a little diced celery in a dressing made from greek yogurt and a cran-raspberry drink.

The green salad had lettuce, fresh radishes, cucumber, tomato, celery, and some amazing avocados that the host provided. At the party we used prepared dressing, but the next day we made another greek yogurt dressing, but this one was made with sweet pickle relish, a squirt of deli mustard, and a squirt of catsup, and pepper.

They were both very tasty and a different approach than I tend to use with an all-in-one fruit and greens salad.

Cole Slaw: First attempt in recent memory

We had some cabbage, a knife and the Joy of Cooking. What to do?
Make Cole Slaw!

We used the technique of soaking the sliced cabbage (or rather 1/4 cabbage in our case) in ice water for an hour while we shopped for interesting things to add.

We made a dressing of greek yogurt, juice of 1/2 lemon and 1/2 lime.

After drying the soaked cabbage we added some cranberries, some not-too-sweet raspberries, chopped toasted pecans, and an apple cored and chopped.

Turns out the raspberries were rather sour so the sour dressing was too much sour. At the table, we sprinkled a little Splenda over the top which helped a lot. The apples, cabbage, nuts, and cranberries were all playing very well together.

Black Beans and Brown Rice

Found an interesting recipe for black beans and brown rice and my Mom and I thought we'd give it a try. Rather than a jalapeño chili we used two small but spicy chilies we found at her local produce market.
We took some of the advice for garnishes: fresh tomato, avocado slices and a topping of a little parmesan cheese.
Next Time: The rice could have been a little more moist. We probably needed to add a little water as it got absorbed until the texture was better.

Almond Cookies Gluten Free

In the interest of experimenting with Gluten Free baking, for my GF friends, I hunted for an almond cookie recipe. This is the one I came up with for today's experiment from http://www.gluten-free-around-the-world.com:

I thought they turned out pretty nice. A little chewy, a little nutty.