Zero-Mile Diet Recipe: Garden-greens Salad Dressing

Credit: Jeffreyw

A healthy salad dressing for your green salad

A good variety of winter greens can be harvested from planter boxes moved into an unheated greenhouse in fall before hard frost.

We enjoy a nutritious tangy mix of slightly-bitter and spicy salad greens from pickings of mizuna mild mustard greens, arugula (rocket salad), chicory, radicchio, mixed green lettuces, beet greens and calendula petals.

For those of you who are enjoying greens from your own garden, here’s a recipe for a salad dressing that will not fail to enhance all these flavours.

Whisk or blend together:

• ½ cup (125 mL) olive oil
• ¼ cup (60 mL) balsamic vinegar
• 2 Tbsp. (30 mL) tamari soy sauce or Bragg All Purpose Seasoning
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 Tbsp. (15 mL) liquid honey
• 1 tsp. (5 mL) Dijon mustard
• 1 tsp. (5 mL) black pepper

Even better topped with toasted seeds:

• ¼ cup (60 mL) pumpkin seeds
• ¼ cup (60 mL) sunflower seeds
• 2 Tbsp. (30 mL) tamari soy sauce

In a cast-iron skillet over medium heat stir in the seeds and when lightly browned add tamari soy sauce and sizzle for a minute or two. Remove from the heat and allow the seeds to cool.

For more “garden-gourmet” ideas, you might want to pick up GardenWise magazine this at the end of February. All my columns this year will be featuring “Zero-Mile” recipes that tie in with what’s growing in the garden. Also, you might want to consider sending me your own ideas for garden-to-kitchen dishes for possible publication and a chance to win my next book.