July 2016 - Feed Me Fresh Food and Garden Blog

Today, a handful of summer campers did some recipe testing for a new salad. One that uses a trio of herbs that is commonly found in many South Asian recipes.

That trio is basil, cilantro and mint.

All three of these herbs are happily growing in the Feed Me Fresh garden beds. We went on an herb hunt, armed with scissors, and harvested a bowl full.

Cucumbers are starting to roll in on all playgrounds this week, so we took 2 good sized cukes and added them to the salad.

Purslane

We also used some purslane, which many consider to be a weed. Many farmer’s markets sell it at a high price, its high in healthy Omega 3 fats. It grows like crazy in our garden beds.

We used scissors to cut the herbs into tiny bits sized pieces.

Peeling carrots and plucking purslane

A fancy carrot peeler turned our carrot into skinny slivers.

We plucked purslane leaves and popped them into our salad bowl.

Ingredients:

1 lb. Napa cabbage, cut crosswise into 1/3 inch wide strips

1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and cut into chunks (found in the summer camp garden)

½ cup fresh cilantro (toddler garden)

handful of basil leaves and mint leaves (after school garden and in front of green house)

purslane leaves (a “weed” from the summer camp garden)

1 carrot shredded

For the Dressing:

¼ cup soy sauce

¼ cup fresh lemon juice

zest of 1 lemon

2 tablespoons maple syrup

1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar

1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil

¼ cup olive oil

Whisk all ingredients together and pour over salad just before serving.

After the salad is assembled, we always make sure to take our veggie scraps out to the compost.

We compost our veggie scraps.

Archive for July 2016

Recipe: Garden Salad with Vietnamese Flavors