Using the Greens

Pork Chop and Rice Noodle Salad, originally uploaded by lisbear18.

I'm getting more and more excited about the garden produce. So far I've used some parsley and chives, the garlic shoots, and a fair bit of salad greens. Today, I tasted a few early strawberries. Yes, Edmonton is that far north that strawberry season is beginning as it ends elsewhere. Unfortunately, one of the strawberries wasn't that great. But they're still better than the ones in the store, which I don't buy.

Anyways, I planted some chard today and I'm excited about that. It was delicious last year and totally new to me. I'll be looking for some good recipes for it. I'm also on the lookout for green bean recipes since I'm confident that they will be abundant later in the summer. In the grocery store I'm looking for blueberry season to start. I think they're actually my favourite berries. I'm especially stoked to make blueberry pancakes and maybe oatmeal-blueberry muffins.

This photo is a main course salad that I made using mixed greens for the garden. I dressed them in rice wine vinegar and sesame oil and added some sliced cucumber. I topped that with rice noodles that I mixed with sesame oil, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and sambal oelek. I also added sauteed garlic shoots and onion. The meat on top is a pork chop that I skillet cooked after marinating it--for too short a time really--in soy sauce. The meal was pretty good except the noodles were clumpy. Clearly I don't quite know how to handle them right. . . kind of like at that inferior Vietnamese restaurant.