Blueberry, Vanilla, and Bread Pudding

I had my first taste of blueberries today. We don't get blueberries around here - like ever, not because its winter. So, I'd bought a can of blueberries a couple of weeks back. Having heard about a friend gorging on wild berries in another part of the world, I just decided to bust open the can and have some. I was quite disappointed - the berries looked purple rather than blue, for one; and they were swimming in a sugar syrup and I just tasted sweetness rather than any real flavor from the berries. That's Rs 270 gone down the drain. I was so looking forward to making a spinach and blueberry salad later this week. So, the only sensible thing to do with these sugary babies is to make dessert and put the syrup to good use.

My blueberry and bread pudding turned out quite nice. Would be so much better had I had some fresh berries. But then again, if I had fresh berries, I wouldn't dream of cooking them.

Apple, Strawberry, Lettuce, and Cashew Salad

Tart apples, sweet strawberries on a bed of lettuce, with cashews for crunch, all dressed in red wine vinegar and olive oil.

Strawberry, Pea, Pepper, and Lettuce Salad with a Pesto Dressing

Strawberry, pea, green pepper, and lettuce salad dressed with a basil walnut pesto dressing.

Strawberry, Pea, Pepper, and Lettuce Salad

Ingredients:

• 10 large strawberries
• 1 cup green peas
• 2-3 cups lettuce
• 1 green pepper
• 3-4 basil leaves
• 2 tablespoons basil walnut pesto
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• Handful of sunflower seeds

To make:

• Chop up the strawberries, peppers, and lettuce.
• Finely chop the basil leaves and combine it with the pesto, olive oil and a couple of teaspoons of water to make a dressing.
• Pour over the remaining ingredients.
• Garnish with sunflower seeds.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Strawberry, Lettuce, Pak Choi, and Pepper Salad

Continuing with my theme of adding fruits to salads, here's a salad with lettuce, pak choi, peppers, strawberries, and basil.

Strawberry, Lettuce, Pak Choi, and Pepper Salad

Ingredients

• 15 strawberries
• 2 cups of iceberg lettuce
• 1 green pepper
• 1 cup pak choi
• 3-5 leaves of basil
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon dry chilli flakes

To make:

• Chop the veggies and the strawberries fairly even.
• Combine the veggies and strawberries.
• Tear up the basil leaves and add on top.
• Add the chilli flakes to the olive oil and dress the salad.

Lettuce and Pear Salad with a Quick Raspberry Vinaigrette

Am dealing with quite a bit of a blogging backlog lately - this is my dinner from Saturday night!

We get these yellow pears here, which are white on the inside have a really high water content. So, this time, I decided to have a completely sweet salad with lettuce, pears, and a raspberry vinaigrette.

I happened to have a rasberry preserve, that I liquified to make a dressing for the salad. Of course, if you are fortunate enough to get fresh rasberries, nothing like it!

Lettuce and Pear Salad

Ingredients:

• 2-3 cups of chopped iceberg lettuce
• 1 pear, chopped
• 2-3 tablespoons of rasberry preserve

To make:

• Chop the iceberg lettuce into medium sized long strips, and the pear into bite sized chunks.
• Add a couple of tablespoons of water to the rasberry preserve to make it more liquid.
• Dress the salad with the rasberry dressing.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Strawberry Lettuce Salad

For lunch today, a delightful sweet salad consisting of strawberries and lettuce, with maple adding to the sweetness.

Lettuce isn’t just a sweet and crunchy vegetable that makes salads appetizing, or the mandatory greens you add atop your burger! It’s one of the most nutrient-dense foods around, according to Dr. Joel Fuhrman. Nutrient density can also be understood as the ratio of the nutrient composition of a given food to the nutrient requirements of the human body. This, according to the eBook 'Profoundly Raw'. OK, as you see from the chart below, it’s nowhere close to the heavy weights kale and spinach, but would you rather eat a kilo of kale or lettuce?

Strawberry Lettuce Salad

Ingredients:

• 10-12 strawberries
• 2-3 cups of lettuce
• 10-12 green olives
• 1 cup of green pepper
• ½ cup of red pepper
• Tablespoon of maple syrup

To make:

• Tear up the lettuce - I used iceberg – into bite sized chunks.
• Chop up the peppers into little squares, and the strawberries you can leave whole or slice in half, depending on the size.
• Mix all the ingredients.
• Pour the maple syrup on top right before you want to eat the salad or the lettuce will start to wilt away.

 



Guava, Mulberry and Maple Salad

This is a really easy salad/dessert to make with very few ingredients. I added a couple of broken down pieces of my flaxseed chikki for added crunch. Flaxseed chikki is really easy to make – just melt some jaggery or brown sugar in a pan. Let cool for 5 minutes. Add the flax seeds. Stir well. Transfer to a flat bottomed pan and cut into diamond shaped or square pieces and let it set till it’s a solid mass.

Guava, Mulberry, Maple Salad

Ingredients:

• 1 large guava
• 10 mulberries
• 1 cup iceberg lettuce
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup
• 2 pieces of flaxseed chikki (optional)

To make:

• On a bed of lettuce leaves, lay the guava pieces.
• Add the mulberries and the maple syrup on top.
• Finish with chunks of flaxseed chikki on top.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Lettuce Salad with Maple and Mulberry Dressing

You know I just had to try my maple syrup I bought yesterday! :)

Lettuce is such a delicious and easy to work with vegetable. You have to be a moron to totally wreck a recipe containing lettuce. And for some strange reason, I surmised that maple and miso would be a good combination. Don't laugh -I Googled it and yes, there are recipes combining those exact same ingredients. But lettuce is sweet - I didnt want to ruin it with miso's inherent saltiness. So, the miso+maple combo will have to wait. Maybe with the mung bean sprouts, sometime later this week. For now, let's just combine the sweet of the lettuce with the sweetness of my mulberries:

Lettuce Salad with Maple and Mulberry Dressing

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of iceberg lettuce
• 1.5 cups of spinach
• 1/2 a green pepper
• 1/2 a pomogranate
• Handful of mint
• About 10-15 mulberries

Dressing

• 5 mulberries
• 3 Teaspoons of maple syrup
• Dash of olive oil

To make:

Clean and chop the spinach, lettuce, pepper and mint.

Add the pomogranate and mulberries.

Crush with your bare hands the 5 mulberries for your dressing into the maple syrup and olive oil mixture. Mix and add to the salad. I typically dont have my salad dripping in dressing as I make my salads to last me the whole day and keeping them wilt-free and fresh is a bigger priority. If you're going to have the salad immediately, by all means make more of the salad dressing.

Have this within a reasonable amount of time - The lettuce leaves will start to wilt if you do not refrigerate the salad. Other than that - DELISH!

Vegan Strawberry Sorbet

Strawberries are finally in season!! So, I bought a carton of strawberries and a 200 mils soy milk box to make a frozen strawberry treat. Well, I was going for strawberry ice cream, but it turned out more like a sorbet.

Vegan Strawberry Icecream Sorbet

Servings: 2-3 scoops

Ingredients:

• 12 strawberries
• 75-100 mils of unsweetened soy milk
• 2 tablespoons of organic cane jaggery (replace with brown sugar, if needed)
• Pinch of rock salt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon rasberry food coloring

To make:
Freeze the strawberries for a couple of hours in the freezer.

Take them out, thaw them for a while, then roughly chop them.

In a blender, add the strawberries, jaggery, salt, and soy milk.

Blend well for 5-10 minutes. Add the vanilla extract and the coloring.

Spread the mixture in a bowl and let it freeze for at least 4 hours in the freezer.

After that, put the solid mixture back in the blender (or stir it up roughly by hands). Put back in the freezer for a couple of hours more for a final freeze.
Garnish with strawberries and serve.