I love summer in large part because it is a great excuse to eat salads, but salads that taste really, really good.  The above picture is a summer salad with pecan crusted baked goat cheese.  The cheese is a little special as it is one of the carried-back-from-Scotland cheese.  The Golden Cross goat cheese is a firmer texture than most goat cheeses I’ve eaten, and has a great duel texture.  This made for an interesting texture when baked, as the outer portion almost melts and the inner texture was just yummy goodness.  Bob has liked the baked goat cheese salad before, but I almost became jealous with the way he gushed over this version.  The salad is pretty basic, but the goat cheese and the black current balsamic vinegar with good olive oil, shallot and garlic.  A grainless, meatless dish and everyone was very happy with this meal.

I recently went back to the CSA type veggie basket.  Each week I get a little Christmas present of new veggies to try.  I have discovered that I do not like dandelion greens, am ok with kale, do like sweet potatoes, and am very fond of most fruit.  This week was a whole new experience – kohlrabi.

This odd looking veggie reminds me a little of cabbage, a little of a turnip and a very little of a something that I totally can’t explain.  I searched a lot of websites to see how to prepare this thing, find a good recipe etc. and while I got a lot of ideas, I didn’t get a good recipe.  Most called for mayo, which I I have a visceral dislike of, so no recipe.  But, I did get some ideas and grabbed some carrots, celery, an apple and a spicy brown sugar dressing that I love to make a side salad for the pulled pork this week.  The results …

Not as pretty as the goat cheese salad, but it tasted really, really good (and went very, very well with the apple braised pulled pork – yet another no grain meal that I actually really liked).

Hopefully the basket this week with have more new things for me to try.  Until then – or something remotely interesting comes up – Enjoy!