Quinoa Tabbouleh

Being Gluten Free has it's disadvantages, but one of the advantages is getting to tinker with traditional recipes so that I can eat them. In lieu of cracked bulgar wheat, I have substituted Quinoa-an ancient grain that is high in protein and fiber.

2 cups of cooked Quinoa, cooled (I prefer red)
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 tsp. salt
2-3 medium tomatoes diced
1-2 medium cucumber peeled, diced
3 green onions, or 1 spring onion diced whites and greens
1/2 cup of fresh curly leaf parsley chopped
1/4 cup of oil, I like olive oil or canola for a lighter taste

Combine all ingredients, reserve the oil for just before serving. Serve cool. Perfect on a hot summer day. Especially when you can get all the ingredients fresh from your garden or local farmers' market. Tom and I just bought dwarf lemon and lime trees, a friend has luck with his wintering it in his sun room.

Raw, and Grain Free, Date and Nut Bars

Tom and I are always on the go and frequently need to pack enough food for the whole day. I thought I'd give these a whirl.



1 cup dates
1 cup nuts (your choice)

Optional:
Honey
Cocoa powder
Other dried fruits
Salt to taste
Spices to taste
Coconut (personally I dislike Coconut)

Here's what I did:

1 cup Dates
1 cup Walnuts
1 Tablespoon Honey (I found I needed it to get everything to bind)

Combine everything together in a food processor and blend until smooth.

I took 3/4 of the mixture and smashed it into a square dish and popped it in the fridge. Then I added a smattering of Dried Cranberries and a couple cubes of Crystallized Ginger and pulsed again.

I wish I had done that to the whole thing it was so unbelievably good.

Garlic Scapes!

What's a Garlic Scape you ask? It is what would be the flowering part of the garlic if we didn't clip it off to eat and keep the bulb edible too. I had heard about them before, but never had seen them used in a recipe. There's one good reason why, they are only available about 2 weeks out of the growing cycle.

Debra planted a lot of garlic back in late October, early November. It's been sprouting out of the ground since February. But just this last week of May the Garlic Scapes showed up. And the garlic bulb won't be ready for a few more weeks, and some varieties not until August!

Scapes also look cool, you cut them when they make a circle. The flavor is amazing...you can eat them raw! I mean, I've eaten strong garlic raw, but it's not pleasant and it's actually made me sick a few times. But Scapes are mild and sweet and can be used just like a green onion.

Yesterday (Thursday) at the Saint Andrew Farmers' Market, our chef Travis Miller was making a stir fry to sample with RiverSong Farm's sugar snap peas and garlic scapes and Misty Meadows's candy apple onions, so good. And he was sampling the scapes raw! Just last night, Tom and I used them as a topping on our pizza.

We may have them for 1 more week, but it's uncertain. This is why I love eating seasonally, you really appreciate what you get when you get it, but also the taste is so much better, because it's fresh, that it's worth the wait.

Picture to come.