Home Grown

Sometimes, I despair at my attempts to grow vegetables in our garden. 

Yet there has been more than one occasion on which I have been able to throw together an appetizing green salad of various leaves picked from the garden.

The nasturtiums I sowed last year have finally come good, so I picked a few leaves to make a salad recently.  I'm not a great fan of nasturtium leaves in salads but I don't mind a scant sprinkling of them.  I grew the nasturtiums for the seed because I would like to try and make poor man's capers from them.

I have also grown a few Russian kale plants, these I don't mind so a good handful went into the salad bowl.

My rocket (arugula) bolted to seed but do you know that rocket flowers are edible?  They have a flavour which I think is very much like sesame seeds.  I have noticed that the native bees are very attracted to them as well.

To the salad I added a few blanched green beans and an avocado along with a thinly sliced lemon and voila! - A healthy green salad to serve with the main course.

A vinaigrette is my favourite salad dressing which I make from freshly squeezed lemon juice, olive oil and Dijon or French mustard.

Hmmm, is it still a vinaigrette if it doesn't have vinegar as an ingredient?

Well, here's a recipe for 

Lemon Vinaigrette Dressing

80ml (1/3 cup) olive oil

2 1/2 tbs fresh lemon juice, strained

1 tsp Dijon or French mustard

Fine sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

Place all ingredients in a glass jar with lid, shake vigorously and serve.

Enjoy.