Seeds and Almond Savoury Praline

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Sweet & Savoury Praline

Up Your Salad Game… I really hate croutons. I’ve made them a few times and they are a bit better than the store bought ones that are essentially little bread rocks that are tossed onto salads. At least with the homemade variety you can get your fork into them since they are essentially toasted oil soaked bread chunks that are still a little soft. It could be that I’m just a klutz at eating salads so that whenever I try to get a crouton onto my fork, it slips and crashes into the plate with enough of a racket that […]

Grilled Sweet Corn and Peach Quinoa Salad

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Grilled Sweet Corn and Peach Quinoa Salad

Edit August 2017: I still love this salad but I have been adding a can of rinsed black beans to it. The beans make the salad more of a meal. I can’t help but feel that something has been lost this time of year. Summer is all but over and fall is fast approaching; I can feel it in that breeze that cools me down in the still hot sun. When it is hot and muggy out like it is today, I get fooled into thinking that daylight will extend long into the evening and I’m rudely reminded that the […]

Summer Salad with Grilled Chicken, Bacon & Chipotle Lime Vinaigrette

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I’ve been on a bit of a salad kick lately. One small part is to try and eat more greens another reason is the onset of warmer weather here in Ontario. The biggest reason is because we are in the process of selling our house so to offset the junk that we eat when we go out, I’ve been making these salads which cut down on the cooking smells in the house and the mess. I do cook the bacon in the house but the chicken goes on the grill. I must add that I had a revelation about how […]

Field Green Salad topped with Fried Halloumi and Za’atar Vinaigrette

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Digging through my fridge one day I discovered that I had a package of halloumi cheese underneath some cheddar in the door of the fridge. I was absolutely starving and it was lunch time. I fried up a little in a dry pan, put the pieces on crackers and had a thoroughly satisfying, if unbalanced lunch. A girl can’t live on cheese and crackers alone, without getting really fat and constipated, so later in the week I made myself a very healthy lunch while still satisfying my recurring craving for halloumi cheese. If you are not familiar with halloumi, it […]

Kale Salad with Pancetta & Balsamic Vinaigrette

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I’ve always like kale in soups but this salad is my favourite way to eat kale now. I have been eating absurdly large servings of this salad so I’m feeling like I should be entered into the running for dietary sainthood for eating this much raw kale.. Bacon notwithstanding. The first time I made a kale salad was on Christmas Day. I saw on Twitter that Martin’s Family Fruit store said they had a delivery of fresh Ontario kale and on the drive home to Waterloo from Barrie on the 23rd I asked them via Twitter whether they had any […]

Coleslaw with Beets and Quinoa

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The inspiration for this coleslaw came from a couple of different places. The first was from a trip we took to Ste. Anne’s Spa in Grafton back in September for our 8th wedding anniversary.  At lunch one day there was a cabbage salad served with a vinaigrette over quinoa. It was lovely but I prefer a richer dressing with cabbage. The second source of inspiration came from Jamie Oliver’s recent cookbook, Jamie’s Great Britain. He used a mayonnaise-based dressing on a huge pile of cabbage, carrots and beets that he ran through his food processor and then dressed them with mayo, mustard, cider […]

Baby Arugula Salad with Prosciutto, Shaved Parmesan and Balsamic Vinaigrette

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This is my absolute favourite salad to make. I enjoy other salads that are more difficult to put together but I very seldom make them at home – I leave that for restaurants. This salad is so simple and so satisfying that I find that it is enough for a meal for two. You needn’t worry about getting Prosciutto di Parma from the gourmet deli, although for the salad in the picture I did use the good stuff from Vincenzo’s. I usually make this with the pre-sliced, packaged prosciutto from the deli section at the grocery store. Getting Parmigiano-Reggiano wedges […]