Dandelion Salad with Goat Cheese & Tomato Dressing
1. Join a CSA: My husband and I have had a community supported agriculture (CSA) share from a local farm for years. If you like to cook and like to try new foods, it’s a fun way to get locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables. You pay up front, which helps the farmer cover early-season costs, in exchange for farm-fresh produce each week. Find great recipes for spring produce, like watercress and apricots, in our Spring Recipe Collection.
2. Buy the Cow: We don’t eat a lot of meat, but when we do, we choose meat that we know has been raised in a sustainable, humane way. Small farms are increasingly selling “animal shares”: a whole animal or portion of one. Each year, we go in on a cow with some friends. The farm takes care of processing, USDA inspection and packaging. Get 25 recipes for ground beef, including Mini Shepherd’s Pies and Stuffed Chard with Fresh Marinara.
3. Start a Kitchen Garden: We live in an apartment, so aren’t able to grow a lot of our own food, but we do grow salad greens and herbs in containers on our deck. It’s a great way to supplement our CSA without heading to the grocery store. Salad greens are easy to sow and quick to grow. These 9 steps will have you growing your own greens in no time.
4. Join a Community Garden: Since we were itching to grow more of our own food, we got a plot at a community garden this year. We have a small section of a larger garden at one of our city parks, but a community garden can be as small as a simple bed next to a building.
5. Pick Your Own: From the first spring
strawberries to the fall apple harvest, one of our favorite
activities is visiting pick-your-own farms. We freeze several
gallons of blueberries and strawberries each year so we can enjoy
the flavors of summer all year long.
Here’s that yummy salad of dandelion greens I promised earlier:
Dandelion Salad with Goat Cheese & Tomato
Dressing
Active time: 25 minutes | Total: 1 hour
Cultivated dandelion greens are a bit milder than their wild cousins, but they still have some bite—easily tamed with bacon and cheese in this salad.
8 ounces orecchiette or small pasta shells, preferably
whole-wheat
2 slices bacon
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium red onion, thinly sliced
2 cups chopped dandelion greens or arugula, any tough stems
removed
2 cups baby spinach
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup
Goat Cheese & Tomato Dressing, plus more
if desired
1. Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil. Add pasta and cook
according to package directions. Drain, rinse with cold water and
set aside.
2. Cook bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until crisp,
about 4 minutes. Drain on a paper towel. Crumble when cool. Wipe
out the pan. Add oil and onion and cook, stirring, over medium heat
until soft, about 5 minutes. Let cool.
3. When the bacon and onion are cool, toss them in a large bowl
with dandelion greens (or arugula), spinach, Parmesan and 1/2 cup
Goat Cheese & Tomato Dressing. Drizzle more dressing over each
serving, if desired.
Makes 4 servings, about 2 cups each.
Per serving: 382 calories; 16 g fat (4 g sat, 10 g mono); 12 mg
cholesterol; 49 g carbohydrate; 15 g protein; 6 g fiber; 378 mg
sodium; 378 mg potassium.
Nutrition bonus: Vitamin A (90% daily value), Vitamin C (30% dv),
Iron & Magnesium (19% dv), Calcium (16% dv).
By Carolyn Malcoun
When associate editor Carolyn Malcoun came to Vermont to attend New England Culinary Institute, she knew she didn't want to work in a restaurant but knew that she wanted to do something in the food industry. Luckily she discovered EatingWell, where she's able to combine her love of food and writing.
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