5 Salads from the Garden You Need to Try
Food notes from a flower farm?
Yes!
You knew this about us.
One of the things we care deeply about is eating good food.
Being a part of our food’s story and preparing delicious and healthy meals is at the heart of the beautiful life we’re building for our children.
So, today we want to share our 5 favorite garden-fresh salads with you.
Hope you enjoy!
#5 Roasted Beet Salad
One of our favorite West Point traditions was inviting Charles’ cadets into our home.
Can you imagine, as a college student, heading over to your professor’s house to do your laundry, eat dinner with their family, call home, and hang out with friendly-faced humans?
Now, it’s worth mentioning that this tradition doesn’t exist as some mere perk, but as a chance for Army families to mentor future officers, and for those future officers to relax in the midst of a very challenging 47-month experience.
It was super important to us that as we modeled the life of an Army family to share fresh, homemade food with Charles’ students, particularly in light of the fact that they hadn’t eaten a home-cooked meal in a while.
Well, we tried this salad once with one of Charles’ cadets we became really close with.
And after we did, we all wondered how we ever lived without eating beets every day!
#4 Peruvian Quinoa and Vegetable Salad
Moosewood is, hands-down, one of our all-time favorite restaurants.
It was there, on a warm summer evening in 2015 when Dana’s parents were visiting from Michigan, that Charles learned to love cooked cherry tomatoes.
But that’s another story!
This recipe is adapted from the book, Moosewood Restaurant Favorites.
We can totally see how this gem made the cut!
The combination of cooked quinoa with fresh ingredients like diced cucumber and tomato, aromatic cilantro, black beans, and sweet corn gives this salad a wonderful texture.
We’ve tweaked the way we make it a little over the years, and it’s become a staple side dish for summer meals outside, and a great dish-to-pass, too!
#3 Caesar Salad
Have you had something come up just as it’s time to get ready for dinner?
Like a raisin up someone’s nose, gum in the hair, or some other travesty that just derails everything you had planned for the next hour or two?
On nights when we have a lot going on around the farm, like spring planting that runs a little too long, or lambing (or a raisin up someone’s nose), dinner prep needs to be short and sweet!
But not at the expense of a healthy meal.
Well, this Caesar salad with homemade dressing and croutons from your sourdough scraps is a quick fix for a fresh dinner in just 30 minutes.
And it just may leave you thinking anchovies aren’t just something you put on the hook to catch a real fish…
#2 Pico de Gallo
The best thing about Pico de Gallo is the leftovers!
We always make extra because this salad is a huge crowd pleaser.
As the salad sits, the rich flavors and smells of cilantro and lime mix with the fresh vegetables flavors making it all the more irresistible.
This salad is so versatile you can add it to your favorite Mexican dish, scrambled eggs, or just eat it with tortilla chips.
Our son recently asked for omelets for breakfast for his birthday, and some leftover Pico in our omelets left us all in breakfast bliss!!!
#1 Harvest Pizza
OK, you got us!
This isn’t exactly a salad.
It’s a no-sauce veggie pizza loaded with kale, quinoa, feta, pickled beats, and pickled onions.
This was the pizza that, on top of all the wonderful people we met when we first visited Cornell, lured us to graduate school in Ithaca back in 2014.
We’d flown in on a red eye from Anchorage to Syracuse with our son, Robert, the day after he turned 1 to visit Cornell and scope out housing.
After a marathon nap we drove downtown and ended up at a table on the patio at the Ithaca Beer Company drinking a Flower Power IPA and a ginger beer, watching a bunch of dads throwing horseshoes with their kids on the lawn, imagining how moving to the Finger Lakes would change our lives.
We totally recommend this next time you make a pizza at home or visit Ithaca.