Mountain View, CA & Strawberry Arugula Salad

When I found Jess's blog CookSmarts I instantly loved what she was doing. Her recipes are fresh and easy, the directions are clear enough that anyone can cook (yes, YOU!), and her graphics were eye-catching. The more I followed her and tried her recipes I knew I found something great. What I didn't know was that we were neighbors awhile back... until I got her farmers' market post! This market that she is sharing today was the one I used to visit in my neighborhood. What a small world! Enjoy a glimpse into OUR Californian market :)

Hi there! Jess from Cook Smarts here, and I was lucky enough to be asked by Tiffany to contribute to her Farmer’s Market Friday series. I’m not gonna lie. I don’t get to the farmer’s market nearly often enough. Weekends are often packed with travel and social plans, but on the rare occasion when I’m home and free, I have the hard decision of choosing from 4 different markets. Luckily, the largest and most vibrant one also happens to be the one closest to me, the Mountain View Farmer’s Market.

This last visit to the market was at one of my favorite times of the year when summer produce is just arriving. Every fruit stand vendor is handing out samples of their sweet harvests. Tomatoes, asparagus, and strawberries blanket the market stalls. The sun is out and an outing to the farmer’s market feels more like a trip to the county fair than grocery shopping.

My typical approach is to take one lap to soak it all in before making any purchases. Once I’ve gotten my share free samples, then I get down to business and start coming up with menu ideas. We just launched a new meal planning service over at Cook Smarts, and it’s always fun to use the market to inspire our menus.

On this last trip after a few laps, I picked out:

• A pint of strawberries ($3)
• A bulb of fennel ($2)
• Basil ($2)
• Arugula ($3)
• Fingerling potatoes ($3)
• Lacinato kale ($2)

When I got home with the bounty, I got to work on making one of my favorite salads - mixing strawberry, fennel, and arugula with a balsamic vinaigrette. The pepperiness of the arugula combined with sweet strawberry and fennel and tart balsamic is one of my absolute favorite combinations. Here’s the recipe below:

Strawberry Arugula Salad

{serves 4}

Fennel, sliced - 1 small bulb

Strawberries, sliced - ½ pint

Basil, sliced - A few leaves

Arugula - 4 oz

Pecans - ¼ cup

Balsamic vinegar - 1 ½ tbs.

Dijon mustard - 1 tsp.

Salt & pepper

Olive oil - 3 tbs.

Clean and prep all salad ingredients. Mix together vinegar, mustard, and a good pinch of salt & pepper. Whisk in olive oil, and toss everything together

------------------------------------------------------------------------

See what I am talking about with the fresh and easy recipes?!  My favorite dish right now is Jess's sweet potato tacos, and the chances are if you come to visit that is what I will be serving :)  Make sure you stop over at CookSmarts or find Jess with one of the links below to see what goodness she is cooking up today!  Thank you Jess, for sharing your/our bit of the globe with us and maybe we can hit up the market together one of these days!!!  And to the rest of you, I hope you get out and enjoy your farmers' market this week!

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Avocado, Egg, and Feta Salad (Vegetarian & Gluten Free)

Yup, it's chick food.  And I fed it to my man.  For dinner.

Sometimes I am mean like that.

Except, really, I am not that mean.  If you think about it.  I am very, very nice.  Because I am making sure he is healthy and lives a long time. I like him a lot and would kinda like to keep him around.

As great as steak and potatoes are, those are not the foods that keep us kicking for a good, long time. 

He can have his steak and potatoes once in awhile (and I will not complain as I love them as well!) and then he can have a healthy whole-meal-salad once in awhile. 

The best part is that he doesn't complain.  In fact, he likes my chick food.  Which maybe means it's not so much chick food as it is people food.

This can be a whole meal by itself, or you can add some bread to accompany it, if you choose.  I choose yes.

Straight from Everyday Food, June 2012

Ingredients

• Thinly sliced celery
• Baby arugula or other greens
• Fresh dill
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• Lemon juice
• Crumbled feta
• Sliced avocado
• Hard-cooked eggs, cut into wedges

Directions

1. Toss together celery, greens, and dill. Dress with olive oil and lemon juice. Top with feta, avocado, and eggs.

COST per large plate: $1.70

(includes a whole avocado, which can be quite pricey.  Find a cheap one and dramatically cut the cost...)

And the sun came out... (Arugula Salad with Oranges and Beets)

Remember when I quoted those ever-wise words of Annie?  Well, it happened.  The sun came out, both literally and figuratively.  There is sunshine everywhere today, including my soul. 

It started this morning.  I woke up with the ability to breathe again.  Yes!

Yesterday I was thinking how we so often say things like, "I will never take the ability to breathe for granted again!"  For example: I used to live on this little (and by little I mean teeny-tiny, 1/4 of a square mile in size TOTAL) island with about 15,000 people living on it.  Yes, it was a little claustrophobic at times.  But that was OK.  I am incredibly sanguine, so that didn't bother me that much.  But the showers, oh the showers...  Not only were they cold, but they were salt-water.  And sometimes, when the power went out, which really was more than "sometimes" and instead like half of the time, we had to go get buckets of said cold, salt water out of a well.  That had cockroaches crawling all over it.  In this dark basement room.  (No, I am not making this up, and no, I did not walk to school barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways.)  During these moments I would hear myself saying, "I will never take clean and warm running water for granted again!"  But then I returned to the States.  Sure, the first few days I was in awe at the beauty of the faucet.  It didn't take long, however, for me to forget how wonderful that actually is and now I totally take it for granted -- unless the water heater breaks.  Then I find myself remembering my little island and how this used to be the norm and I think, "HOW IN THE WORLD DID I SURVIVE COLD SHOWERS ALL THE TIME?!" 

The point is this:  I can breathe again, and I know I am going to take that for granted.  Shoot -- five hours into and I already do.  And that is OK.  I am ready to take that for granted again.  That cold is over and I can fully live again.

Sunshine.
Then, on the way to work, the sun was actually shining, and shining brightly.  It wasn't warm, but it was bright.  I slid open the sunroof, turned up my music, and tapped my toes along with the beat. 

Sunshine.

So I bring to you today a sunny side dish.  A little salad, to be exact.  The beets and oranges, when cooked, release some of their juice which is used a little olive oil and salt to create the dressing.  The arugula has its own wonderful (albeit slightly bitter) flavor.  Mix it all together and you get something light and yum.

By the way, if you don't like beets, try this anyway.  I used to think beets tasted like the ground.  Actually, I still do... but it doesn't taste bad to me anymore.  And these beets you see up there in the picture are awesome because they are already steamed and peeled and you just have to heat them up for this recipe, although they are also great cold.  This little box has six or so beets in it.  Much easier than peeling, steaming, and then cooking with the oranges.  You could also use regular beets, of course.  Either way though, use them!  They are some of nature's wonders.  And remember, it is March.  The time of sunshine is near... yesssss!

Salad from Real Simple, October 2011

Serves 4| Hands-On Time: 10m | Total Time: 45m (or 30 minutes if using the TJ's beets)

 

Ingredients

• 1 pound beets, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch wedges
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• kosher salt and black pepper
• 2 oranges, cut into large chunks
• 6 cups baby arugula (5 ounces)

Directions

Heat oven to 450° F. On a rimmed baking sheet, toss the beets with 3 tablespoons of the oil, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper. Roast until beginning to soften, 13 to 15 minutes. Add the oranges to the baking sheet and roast, tossing once, until the beets and oranges are tender, 15 to 17 minutes more. Add the arugula and toss to combine.

Cost: $4.74                   Cost Per Serving (4): $1.19

Pear & Arugula un-Flatbread (The Quest for the Perfect Flatbread, Part 1)

There's a little something that I do when I find something I really like at a restaurant:  I try to figure out what they did to make it taste so darn good.  See, I have this idea that if some cook in a restaurant can do it, so can I.  The problem is that other than the Olive Garden, most restaurants aren't willing to tell you how they do it.  (The Olive Garden, however, posts many of their recipes online, which if you ask me is quite wonderful.)  This means that if I try something that I really really REALLY want to have at home I am then on the quest to make it happen.  Which would be how I learned to make some great avgolemono soup... but that is for another post, another time.  This particular quest that I am on right now is how to make the pear and arugula flatbread from this place:

Have you tried this stuff???  This flatbread is so incredibly delicious that I cannot even explain it to you.  It is, wow... top notch.  Top notch.  But alas, there is no recipe out there for it so it is up to me to find out how to do it.

First, I played around with my toppings.  We tried pears with arugula and blue cheese broiled on toast.  It was nice, but I was missing something.  So I went back to The Cheesecake Factory, ordered myself some of that flatbread, and realized I needed caramelized onions.

That was easy.  So easy.  I had never caramelized onions before, but now I feel a whole new world is opened up to me.  I want to put caramelized onions on burgers, on fish, on everything.

My husband told me it made the house smell like In-n-Out.  That means it was a success ;)

Then I needed to find out how to make flatbread.  According some website I found via a Google search, I could make flatbread with pizza dough. 

Well. 

Maybe it worked for them, but not for me.  My flatbread, as yummy as it was, was not FLAT bread, but Puffy bread.  But that's OK... I am on the right start and I am not done yet.  I will make the perfect pear and arugula flatbread sometime soon, I promise you that.

In the meantime, I don't mind enjoying Pear and Arugula Puffy-bread and I thought you might enjoy it, too ;)

 
THIS TIME --

INGREDIENTS:
1 pack fresh pizza dough
1 pear, chopped
1 cup arugula
1/2 cup soft cheese
3T olive oil
1/2 white onion
salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS:

1. Follow directions for pizza dough or flat bread dough for prep. 
2. To caramelize onions, chop the onion into slices.  Cook with 1T of olive oil over medium-low heat, stirring often.  Let cook for about 30 minutes.
3. When pizza dough is ready, spread out in shape you want and spread 2T of olive oil on top.  Put all toppings on the dough and cook for 8-10 minutes on 400F.

COST:  $5.20          COST PER SERVING --
                                       As the main dish (2): $2.60
                                       As a side (4): $1.30

Pears with Bleu Cheese and Arugula

My oh my. 

You will DEFINITELY want to make these little bad boys for your next get together.

These are quite possibly the tastiest and easiest h'orderves I have ever tried.  They take no special technique, which makes someone like myself (AKA someone who abhors anything requiring fine motor skills) able to do these.

Shoot, if you can finger paint you can make these -- they are that simple.

First, you need four ingredients:

Three pears, creamy bleu cheese, prosciutto, and arugula.  Turkey bacon works, too, if you don't like prosciutto.  You just need to cook it first, but the rest of the instructions are the same.

Cut the pears into eight wedges.  Smear cheese on top.  Layer two to three pieces of arugula.  Wrap in your meat. 

Ta-da! 

I told you it was simple ;)

**If you are making them in advance, toss the sliced pears in fresh lemon juice before hand so they don't brown.

I found another great thing about Christmas break: the fact that I can take pictures when their is sunshine outside!  Finally I can do real pictures.  Sure, I may have looked like a fool walking to the park carrying a plate of h'orderves, a bowl of arugula, a pear, and a camera slung over my shoulder... not to mention my beautiful outfit of sweaty gym clothes and a post-Zumba hair-do.  Whatever.  I walked with my head held high knowing I would get some good pictures that my little apartment could not provide -- and I offered an h'orderve to anybody staring at me.  That shut it down real quick ;)

Recipe from Real Simple, January 2008

COST: $9.70                 COST per piece (24): 41 cents