Greens and grains salad

This is a slight mod to an earlier recipe - I needed to add some protein while still keeping it vegan. It turned out to be quite tasty and (bonus!) it keeps well in the fridge.

Wild rice and chickpea salad

I decided to try and recreate a salad from the cafe of a local health food store. It didn't turn out exactly the same, but it still tastes pretty good. This makes a nice light salad for lunch.

Middle eastern salad

After a trip to the farmer's market today my fridge is well stocked with fruit and veggies. Yay! I also picked up some ingredients at the little Greek grocery store, including an interesting looking tomato vinegar which I'm keen to try.

But that's for another day. My main goal today was to make three salads, two of which I'm posting. The third was M's excellent recipe for Mediterranean Barley Salad, which I'll try with grilled prawns or chicken or maybe something else.

Nicoise salad with roasted vegetables

This weekend was pretty much a bust as far as cooking goes (or anything else, actually). But I did manage to briefly escape my prison cell to pick up a few much needed groceries. Although I thought about cooking something to restock my empty freezer, I decided to stick with salads. Partly out of laziness, but I'm also hopeful that summer will return.

You know, once the snow melts :-).

I make a Nicoise-inspired salad quite often in the summer, but I wanted to shake up my usual recipe. My Rebar cookbook had a version that included roasted beets, so I decided to throw a beet in the oven along with some other veggies. And I added the traditional capers and anchovies to my standard dressing in lieu of serving them on top. I have leftover dressing and some different veggies in the fridge so I'll try a few more variations during the week.

Asian pesto chicken salad

Continuing with my salad kick, this recipe was another way to use some of the nice herbs that I bought at the market. Although the original recipe called for fresh ginger in the pesto I added it to the dressing instead. This made quite a lot of pesto and I thought that the leftovers would be a bit more versatile sans ginger.

Bulgor and chickpea salad

I hit the Crossroads farmers' market yesterday to pick up some fresh veggies, and the nice selection of fresh herbs inspired me to make this salad last night. It's still too early in the season to attract a broad selection of vendors to the market, but in this weather I could almost imagine the throngs of shoppers outside, vying for the crunchiest cucumbers and tackiest tchotchkes. Ah, summer in Calgary.

Caesar salad with Cajun chicken

I've been really craving salads recently, probably due to the summer weather we've been enjoying here in Calgary, and I had this salad twice in the past week. I just noticed that M posted a Caesar salad recipe on her wonderful blog, so I decided to post mine too. More salad recipes to follow...

Seared pepper-crusted scallops and sautéed fiddleheads with warm lentil salad

I picked up a ton of fresh produce today at the farmer's market. At this time of year there aren't any locally grown items but it still seems more fun than buying it all at Safeway. Plus it made me think of summer, which is a nice thought to hang on to when the forecast for the holiday Monday is 4. And possibly snow.

This dish was inspired by the fiddleheads that I bought at the market (which, come to think of it, could possibly be local). I didn't have any recipe in mind when I bought them so the rest sort of came together based on other ingredients that I had available. OMG. The flavours, the textures, even the colours... all so good. It was absolutely delicious.

No, I'm serious.

Southwest black bean salad

I wasn't in the mood to cook today so I just threw together a quick salad. I'm a bit in denial about the whole winter-in-late-March thing...

Warm chorizo, scallop, bean and tomato salad

With the start of my vacation less than three weeks away I have Spain on the brain. So it isn't surprising that most of my recipe browsing this weekend was focused on Spanish dishes. I found some incredible recipes, and although the pulpo a la gallega did sound tempting I'll wait until I'm in Galicia to try the octopus. Tonight's meal was much less adventurous but it was chock full of pork fat. I like to think of it as acclimatizing.

Springtime in Calgary...

...is still very far away. On some level I do understand that (although I don't really want to think about it). I was actually expecting to see people wearing shorts today -- it was that lovely outside. (And since I saw a teenager wearing shorts when it was still -10, I'm a little surprised that I didn't!)

Today I was still craving something fresh, so I went online browsing for inspiration. I found a nice looking recipe for quinoa salad with dried lime, but I wanted to add some protein to it -- maybe chicken? And while I was tweaking the recipe, how about ditching that sweet potato? Oh, plus the sage. Aaaand also the feta. I quickly realized that I would not be making that particular dish (although it does look good, doesn't it?), and thought about how I wanted to modify it some more. So with some vague notion of a greens-and-grains room temperature salad, I decided to cook some chicken on the side. I pretty much used the same ingredients as this kebab recipe, with a few tweaks. Here's the result, after the jump.