French-ish Beet Salad with Rosemary flowers

Ahhh rosemary flowers! My favorite new discovery. My rosemary bush is in bloom and I thought "why not?" and put a flower in my mouth! All the delicious rosemary taste without any of the harshness and hardness that you can't swallow.

Here's my mom's trick to beets: suck it up and peel them before you cook them, wash them and there you go: no earthy taste. She likes to microwave them in a glass dish, but I'm sure you could bake them with the same results.

Ingreds:
a couple cooked beets, grated or sliced thinly
a handful roasted almonds, sliced
a spring of chives, chopped
a handful fresh rosemary flowers (yum!)

1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tsp salt
1 tsp spicy mustard

Well it's a salad, you know what to do.

Oh and if you're lame and turn your nose up at beets, you can do this same salad with spinach or arugula and it's just as delicious. Just add honey to the dressing to make up for the sweetness of the beets.

Mediterrasian Veggies

As you can see to the right, I link to a site called Mediterrasian Cooking. It's a cute site, but it fails to live up to the interesting name. Really it just talks about the health benefits of Mediterranean and Asian cuisines, but speaks not of the fusion the name seems to imply.

So here is my attempt at East meets... Middle East (my two fav. areas, foodwise).

Indgreds:

1 clove garlic
1/4 onion, sliced in half rings
2 tb. spoons olive oil
spices: turmeric, coriander, allspice, dried mint
1/2 cup coconut milk

a couple white mushrooms, sliced
1 zucchini, sliced
any other veggies you may wish

Caramelize the garlic and onion in the olive oil with the spices. Add the coconut milk and the veggies and simmer until the sauce is thick. Serve over rice.

There you go: Mediterrasian!

PS I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that this is, in fact, a vegan recipe. Triumph!!

PPS I made this recipe again recently, with a whole bunch of other veggies and also some mango cubes I threw in at the last minute. Worked out well :).