A Real Garden Salad
Serves 2, Preparation Time 20 minutes
A garden salad truly lives up to its name when you grow all or some ingredients, adding value and pride to every serving. We do just that. Early in the season, we gather from our early-growing perennials. The perennials are either grown in their own reserved garden beds or scattered around the yard, thriving wildly as a ground cover that adorns pathways, the lawn, and areas under dense shade trees. Many of our cover plants, like violets, were planted more than a decade ago for ornamental purposes, while others, like dandelions and common purslane, appear spontaneously each year. Regardless of their origin, we take advantage of their presence early in the spring to supplement or add flavour to our salads.
Salads are a crucial part of our diet. We enjoy a generous salad as the main dish for lunch or dinner at least five times a week, all year round. In early spring, it's wonderful to have fresh sage, lemon balm, and onion chives to enhance the flavour of our salads, along with violets and dandelions, while lettuce and other greens are still beginning to grow. Later in the summer, it's tomato season, and nothing compares to the sweetness of our homegrown tomatoes and the steady, abundant supply of fresh basil.
In this version of one of our early garden salads, we picked violet flowers and leaves, garlic chives, sage, and lemon balm. The remaining ingredients were store-bought.
- 2 cups of violet flowers and leaves, washed, dried, and shredded
- 4 sprigs of garlic chives, washed and sliced
- 5 large sage leaves
- ¼ cup lemon balm leaves
- 6 romaine lettuce leaves
- 2 ribs of celery, washed, veins removed and chopped or sliced,
- 4 red radishes
- 2 springs of green onions, washed and sliced
- 3 tablespoons of raisins
- 4 or 5 small sweet peppers or one large one, seeds removed, sliced thinly
- 10 pitted Kalamata olive sliced or whole
- 3 tablespoons of Balsamic vinegar.
- Wash and dry all fresh vegetables
- Slice and chop most of the ingredients into bite-size pieces or smaller. The garlic chives, green onions, and herbs like sage and lemon balm should be chopped into small pieces.
- Combine the ingredients and drizzle on the balsamic vinegar. An alternative to mixing it all in one large bowl is that we usually build our salad in individual bowls. The mixed greens form the base. The colourful ingredients like peppers and radishes decorate the top layer. The olives, flowers and often nuts create the garnish of the salad. Once complete, just before serving, we add the balsamic vinegar.
Other common ingredients in our daily salad include arugula, young kale leaves, sliced sun-dried tomatoes, and sunflower seeds. Other fresh ingredients from our garden or window sill that grow yearly and are often included in our salads are mint, oregano, garlic chives, and rosemary.
Dandelion Pineapple Salad
Tabbouleh Salad
