Spinach Salad and Spinach Recipes

Spinach. I really do love spinach. And I'm not sure why exactly because on it's own it doesn't carry a lot of noticeable flavor. But it makes me feel good. Lately I've been craving greens and thankfully some of our razzle dazzle and curly spinach wintered over. In the photo you can see some small new spinach starts planted between the grown spinach.

We like to make big spinach salads and top with whatever veggies, seeds, and fresh or dried fruit we have. Tonight I'm sauteing cubes of tofu in soy sauce until brown, to add protein. So tonight's salad will have spinach, diced carrot and celery, sunflower seeds, raisins, homegrown sprouts and tofu, all piled up pillowy and tall, drizzled with Newman's lite honey mustard dressing. Homemade bread on the side. Yum.

Here's a few other spinach recipes I'd like to try:

Garlicky greens (can use spinach or kale)

Indian-Spiced Lentils with Spinach (also uses another springtime favorite, rhubarb)

Wilted Spinach Salad with Asian Pears, Blue Cheese, and Pecans

Spinach with Shiitake Mushrooms (I would probably substitute some of our dried hot peppers for the piment d'espelette, and use a mixture of butter and olive oil to sauté the shallots and mushrooms.)

Happy Spinach!

cherry tomatoes

when planning our garden this year, we knew that we only needed one type of cherry tomato, matt's wild. it is a sprawling, unruly tomato that's so prolific it's almost ridiculous. the tomatoes are tiny but flavorful, and the plant is a little more resistant to blight and other tomato diseases than most.

we've had two frost warnings so far this autumn but neither really amounted to anything, so the matt's wild cherry tomatoes keep coming. this is not a bad thing.



last summer i was obsessed with local kitchen's cherry tomato confit. i made the recipe numerous times over the course of the summer and the fall of 2010. this year, however, i had not made it once. this past weekend i set out to remedy that.



i had plenty of tomatoes so i doubled the recipe.




our italian parsley is still going strong, sprawling everywhere in fact, so i was happy to snip a large bunch for this recipe. as for the other herbs in the recipe, i substituted our own dried oregano for the basil.



you need to set aside time for this recipe as the tomatoes are cooked at a low temperature for around two hours. my husband and i were getting hungry so i pulled mine out a little on the early side.



as i'm a southern girl, i spooned the cherry tomato confit on top of grits and added plenty of cracked pepper. i also love the confit spread onto a slice of warm homemade bread or as a filling in a grilled cheese sandwich. this time, i threw the leftover confit into a broccoli and cheddar quiche. also amazing. so many uses!

thanks local kitchen!