Weekly Lunch: Sprouted Lentils and Beets

It's Weekly Lunch time again :) I know you love seeing my beautiful plastic container and my all-in-one spoon-fork-knife.

I picked up a bag of sprouted lentils a couple of weeks ago and have been trying to decide what to do with them. Not wanting to hide them in a soup, I thought instead to showcase them in a salad with roasted chioggia beets, hard boiled egg, toasted hazelnuts, mixed greens, and my old standby, balsamic-mustard vinaigette. I added some blanched yellow wax beans one day as well.



Here's a "recipe" for the vinaigrette:

Balsamic-Mustard Vinaigrette

• 1 tbs. dijon mustard
• 1 tbs. balsamic vinegar - you don't need anything fancy for this
• 2 tbs. olive or grapeseed oil
• pinch of salt, few grinds of pepper

And that's it. Super easy, goes with everything. I like to mix the ingredients in a small plastic squeeze tube that I can take to work and keep in the break room refrigerator all week.

Yellow Raspberries

Good thing I picked up two containers of these. Their flavor is milder than regular raspberries, but they are very refreshing. I am trying to decide what to do with the second container (the first having been devoured in fewer minutes than I have fingers).

Weekly Lunch: Chickpea Salad #1

I enjoy lunch. I like to make a big batch of salad or soup to last through the week, so that I don't have to think about what to have for lunch each day, and so that I can avoid the not-so-spectacular lunch options near my office.

I cooked up a batch of chickpeas over the weekend, made a batch of hummus, and decided to use the rest in a salad. At the farmer's market I picked up some eggs with the prettiest blue and green shells, hazelnuts, green beans, and carrots, mixed them all together with a simple balsamic-dijon mustard vinaigrette, and added a few chunks of fresh goat cheese. Good combo.



Weekly Lunch will be a regular feature here on Olalliberry, so stay tuned.

Carrot Sunflower Dip

OMG, my first berry-free post!!

I saw this recipe on the Front Burner and decided to try it myself. Made some adaptations, adding harissa paste and losing the fresh ginger, cilantro, Bragg's/soy sauce and a couple of the spices. Call me lazy, I will agree with you.



It may look like a thick, pasty barf, but it is really quite good, and something different for those tired of the usual hummus/tapenade/spinach-artichoke dips. I enjoyed it with cucumber slices, blanched green beans, and sesame crackers.

Blueberry Buttermilk Gelato

No, I did not make this. I did, however, greatly enjoy it. Nostrana is a nice neighborhood place making wood-fired pizzas, fresh salads and vegetable dishes, and simple meals. And apparently very good gelato with seasonal flavors.

Blueberry Muffins

These are some fluffy-ass muffins. Heavy on the berries, and with some ground flax seed substituting for part of the flour, they are nearly healthy enough for me to enjoy them for breakfast rather than for dessert. I used this recipe from Simply Recipes, and I will definitely use it again. I may try adding some toasted pecans or walnuts, using whole wheat pastry flour and/or ground oats.

Blueberry Picking

Late-July blueberries from Sauvie Island are some of the best I have ever had. This year they are particularly good. We went to a quiet little farm early (ish) in the morning and picked to our hearts' content, a little over 6lbs of blueberries.

Come back for posts on what I am doing with all of these berries - that is, of course, if I can keep from just eating all of them straight out of the bucket.