#spring salads

These colourful, flavourful, delightful Spring Salads, be they light or hearty, brigt or smoky, are sure to put a spring in your step and a smile on your face! Even more so if you can eat them outside in the sunshine, with birdsong in the background!

Good Green Salad (Vegatarian)

Sill Potatissallad II (Herring Potato Salad)

Prawn and Octopus Pasta Salad

Raspberry, Pea and Feta Salad (Vegetarian)

Rum Tuna and Mango Rice Salad

Spring Chicken Salad 

Green Rice Salad 

Egg, Cucumber, Tomato and Feta Salad

Anchovy and Mackerel Salad

Cilantro and Pomegranate Carrots (Vegan)

Smoked Herring Lentil Salad

Pomegranate Tabbouleh (Vegan)

Apple, Blueberry and Egg Salad

Poached Egg Aspargus Salad (Vegetarian)

I planted tomatoes and summer lettuce this week but the garden is at the intersection of the cool and warm seasons. The kale still thrives without any aphids and the beets and carrots are ready to harvest. To make room for butternut squash, I brought in all the celery. Earlier plantings of lettuce are bolting and the sweet peas both bloom and set seed. Two plantings of arugula produce well whatever the season. Nearby, the artichoke yields large globes and the apple, apricot and nectaplum crops look promising. It is April in my coastal garden.

With the seasonal abundance I like to compose garden gift plates. They’re satisfying in the same way as making a flower arrangement though generally more hastily assembled.

Lately, I walk to a nearby cafe to drop off arugula flowers and calendulas for plating (garnishes). Little Lion Cafe is a local gem with a European and hip vibe. Everything is fresh and artfully prepared.

The blueberries and the kumquats grow next to each other on our sunny patio and they pair well topping Sunday waffles.

This salad was composed by color and delighted my eye and palate. ‘Sea of Red’ lettuce and shreds of ‘Black Magic’ kale provide the base. Add diagonal cuts of celery, sliced magenta radishes, dried cranberries and toasted pepitas. To be repeated.

Four ‘Tango’ celery plants each “twinned” so I had eight plants I’ve been cutting from this winter and spring. Next year I’ll harvest and hold some of the plants earlier before they bolt and become bitter.

The celery harvest was washed, sorted, and shared. Some went to friends, some to critters and some to the compost bin. I made vegetable broth to freeze and sorted by quality and characteristics for cooking, salads and snacks.

My Sunday bouquet: ‘Sunset Celebration’ roses, ‘Classic Magic’ bachelor buttons, larkspur and violas.

You may enjoy seeing what other garden bloggers harvested last week at Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

Thai Peanut Pasta Salad

Tempt your taste buds with this easy noodle salad - great for lunch or a light dinner. It comes together in a snap, thanks to a rotisserie chicken from our deli, on sale every Friday for just $6.

Ingredients

2 cups pulled chicken

½ pound spaghettini pasta, uncooked

⅓ cup carrots, shredded

4 green onions, thinly sliced

⅓ cup dry roasted peanuts, chopped

⅓ cup soy sauce

¼ cup vegetable oil

2 tablespoons white vinegar

2 tablespoons peanut butter

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted

1 dash crushed red pepper

Directions

Slice chicken into julienne strips.

Break pasta into thirds.

Cook pasta in boiling salted water (2 quarts water, 1 teaspoon salt) until just tender (about 5 minutes); drain. Rinse with cold water; drain.

In large bowl, combine chicken, pasta, carrots, green onions and peanuts. Combine remaining ingredients until thoroughly mixed. Toss into chicken mixture. 

I relish the time in spring when the kumquats turn their lovely orange and the leaves bright green. They are ready for my indulgence. Wandering past the tree on the patio, I’ll stop and grab one off the tree for a sweet-tart delight. Like the strawberry guavas I grow, not everyone likes kumquats. To read more about kumquats see my post Kumquats and Marmalade.

There’s kumquat marmalade to make when the summer garden is planted. As soon as my lavender bursts forth in the next week or so I’ll be making a Lavender Kumquat Shrub, something I never got around to last year.

The garden greens—spinach, arugula and kale—are waning and about this time of the season they’re not the best quality. My annual practice is to make a galette of winter greens which takes 6-8 cups of chopped greens.

I should do an updated post on the process. The greens I use vary with the year. A combo of spinach, chard, arugula, kale, radicchio or mustard greens works. You can see a post I did some years ago, A Galette of Winter Greens.

What a year for artichokes! With four plants and abundant production we’re awash in them, but happily so. Only a few remain on the architectural, garden-worthy plants now.

I harvested the last side shoots from the last broccoli plant. When I pulled it up I could see why it produced so well—a very thick stalk and a deep, extensive root system. A bag of leaves went to my friend’s bunnies.

This is about a third of the carrot harvest. I’ve been pulling them all along at various sizes. There were more smaller carrots and this week’s take was 7 pounds. About ten percent of the crop remains, soon to make room for the corn. With all the rain this was definitely the best season for carrots in many years.

A few more beets pulled to make room for the first planting of corn. Thankfully, these are very tender and sweet and any size.

Garden salads are luscious these days.

There’s more to share but I’ll save the pickled red cabbage for next week, after I’ve tasted it.

This time of year I can usually gather a flower bouquet from the garden. Here we have arugula, chives, violas and the last of the sweet peas. Some years celery, parsley and carrot flowers are in the bouquet. Zinnias were planted out last week.

You may enjoy seeing what other garden bloggers harvested last week at Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

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The first purple artichoke of the year was ready to harvest last week. It is likely the heirloom ‘Violetta Di Chioggia’ from Northern Italy. The thorns on my plant are wicked but I’ve read they are variable. The artichoke is incredibly tender and my husband and I think it has the best flavor of all artichokes. We are native Californians and have been eating artichokes since childhood.

These large broccoli side shoots signal the end to the broccoli harvest. Last week I pulled two of the remaining plants and sent most of them with a friend for her four rabbits.

The Tuscan kale is thriving and I pinched out the kale flowers this week and added them to a salad.

The ‘Dark Red Lollo Rossa’ continues to produce the ruffled leaves with the chartreuse stems. It a gem for many reasons and I did a whole post on it. Dark Red Lollo Rossa Lettuce

Here’s the start of a lunch salad with lettuce, kale, arugula and kale flowers.

Neighbors know of the abundance of my celery and regularly ask for it. These days I usually leave it in the mailbox for pick up as in last week’s photo.

Navel oranges still are the fruit of the month and will be for weeks ahead. We give them away by the dozen and still have at least a hundred on the tree. I made 24 jars of orange marmalade last week. Unfortunately, that was all I could do with the ten pounds of sugar on hand. I usually make about 75 jars each season for gifts to family and friends, but sugar may be the limiting reagent.

This would have likely been the Palm Sunday bouquet for the entry at church. Instead, we enjoy it at our dining room table. The eleagnus trimmings seemed too lovely to toss in the green bin and the alstroemeria grows nearby. Some things just go together as I often say. We look for small pleasures in these days.

You may enjoy seeing what other garden bloggers harvested last week at Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.