Apple/Beet Salad

When you're allergic to lettuce, it becomes a challenge to make salads!  Actually, Jim and I were just talking tonight about how we really don't miss lettuce now that I've come up with other salads.  I'll work on getting them all up here in the next couple of weeks - for now, here's my apple/beet salad recipe.  And I should mention that I am a beet convert!  This is actually really good and so pretty.

Also, with all the talk over the last week about arsenic and apple juice, I found a post on Consumer Reports Health that is quite interesting.

Apple/Beet Salad
serves 3 - 4

3 small beets, about 2 - 3 inches in diameter
1 apple, quartered and cored
2 T toasted sunflower seeds
1T lemon juice
1 T olive oil
About 1 T of fresh thyme leaves
Sea salt
White pepper

Cut the tops of the beets off leaving about 1 inch and boil until tender.  Cool and slip off the skins.

Grate the beets and apple pieces together.  Add the sunflower seeds and thyme leaves.  In a separate bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.  Mix into the rest of the salad.  Serve warm (as is) or cold.

Updates thru 8-28-11

Added:
Mission figs, cooked or raw
Beets, boiled
Bok choy, boiled or stir fried
Kohlrabi, boiled or baked
Mustard greens, boiled or stir fried
Fennel seed
Bounty paper towels
Sterling Vineyards, CA - pinot gris, sauvignon blanc

Coconut Milk Ice Cream

When this comes right out of the ice cream maker, it tastes a lot like I remember Dairy Queen soft serve tasting when I was growing up!  This is a good, basic vanilla ice cream flavor.  My taste testers either couldn't tell it'd been made from coconut milk or thought they could detect a slight pleasant coconut taste.

Coconut Milk Ice Cream

3 cans Trader Joe's Lite Coconut Milk (only ingredients are coconut milk and water)
2/3 cup organic sugar
1 Tablespoon homemade vanilla

Pour the coconut milk into a saucepan and add the sugar.  Bring to a simmer and keep simmering, stirring occasionally, for 1/2 hour.  Cool to room temp and then add the vanilla.  Cover and refrigerate overnight.  Process in ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's directions.

Variations:
Use organic dark brown sugar for a caramel flavor.

For peppermint, add 1 cup dried peppermint leaves to coconut milk and sugar.  Simmer  1/2 hour, strain out leaves, cool, add vanilla.

For ginger, add 2 T thinly sliced ginger to the coconut milk and sugar.  Simmer 1/2 hour, remove the ginger pieces, cool and add vanilla.  For a spicier ginger flavor, use 1 T grated ginger and leave it in.

Napa Wine Country

Last month Alex was at a workshop at UC Davis, so Jim and I flew over to California and treated him to a Napa wine weekend!  It's been a challenge to find wines that are oak free and not put through malolactic fermentation (increases the histamine levels), but we found several that were very nice.

I have to share these photos from Sterling Vineyards near Calistoga.  It was one of the most gorgeous wineries I've ever been to - and you get to take a gondola up a mountain to get to the tasting rooms!

Their pinot gris and sauvignon blancs are safe to drink - we tested them out thoroughly!  Their riesling is also no oak, no malo, but I'm not a big riesling fan.  Even at that, it wasn't bad, though.