The Pontificators

After a couple hours picking blueberries at an organic farm half an hour from my house, I had most of a bucket full. That’s probably three or four pounds, I thought, not wanting to overestimate my achievement. I’ll make some muffins and freeze a few for winter. A nice little harvest.

My nice little harvest turned out to be eight pounds, not four. I started eating the berries as fast as I could. I don’t bake, actually, and I don’t even have a muffin recipe to turn to. What was I thinking? That, and dinner time was quick approaching. Here, boyfriend, I thought. Have some blueberries for dinner after a hard day at work.

I’d picked a head of lacey green leaf lettuce from the garden earlier in the day, and glanced around the kitchen for inspiration. A bag of almonds for snacking on at work, a chunk of wild caught smoked salmon, and ooh, a gold beet from the farmer’s market. Hmm, sounds like a night for fancy salad!

blueberry vinaigrette

• 1/2 cup of blueberries
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 1 drizzle (precise!) honey
• 1 splash lemon juice

Blend well and let sit.

honey-cumin toasted almonds

• generous handful almonds, chopped roughly
• approximately 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 drizzle (a teaspoon or so) of honey
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

Melt butter in frying pan or skillet on medium heat. If butter browns, it will be too hot when you add the honey!

Saute almonds, stirring until evenly covered in buttery goodness. Drizzle honey as evenly as possible over almonds, stirring quickly. Add cumin, stirring constantly, and turn off heat. Stir every minute or so until the pan is cool, and then let almonds cool. BE PATIENT. Hot honey will hurt your mouth. It will not be worth it! I promise.

salad

• lots of lettuce. half a head? a whole head? whatever you can eat, really.
• one medium sized beet
• about 1/2 cup smoked salmon
• toasted almonds
• blueberry vinaigrette

Wash, shred, and pat dry lettuce.

Scrub beet (peel if desired — I don’t bother, especially with smallish spring beets) and chop into thin, bite size pieces.

Chop or shred salmon, watching out for bones.

Assemble all ingredients, sprinkling almonds and a generous helping of dressing over the top. Enjoy with crackers and a nice white wine.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Lucy, Recipes, dinner for two, food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.