Southwestern-Style Summer Salad

It has been HOT in mid-Michigan lately, so I've been craving cold refreshing green salads. Lucky for me, my CSA share last week included a variety of great-looking greens. I stared at them until they reminded me of something - in this case, my favorite salad from Chipotle (I know, I'm a classy restaurant-goer). This ended up tasting different, but that was okay; it was still refreshing and interesting. I highly recommend throwing sorrel in with your other salad greens. I'd never had it before, and it adds a tangy excitement to a milder salad mix. Read on for the recipe.

Dinner with Friends: Kaesespaetzle, Salad, and Apple Crisp

This week Chris and I had dinner with our friends Sarynna and Chase at their beautiful new house. They lived in East Berlin for two years and picked up a fondness for Spaetzle - German egg noodles/little dumplings. Sarynna made a Kaesespaetzle recipe from scratch with the noodles, Emmentaler cheese, and fried purple onions. It was delicious and we enjoyed reminiscing about Europe while we ate it (Chris and I have both spent time in Germany as well).

In addition to Sarynna's Spaetzle, Chase made a tossed salad with romaine, artichokes, palm hearts, tomatoes, cucumber, and homemade balsamic dressing - kalamata olives on the side. I love salads with a lot going on, so this was perfect. Chris liked it too, without the olives.

I brought dessert - a new recipe. Ever since I read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food last year, along with a few other books with a similar philosophy, I've been trying to eat more whole foods and less refined and processed stuff. This seemed like a good opportunity to challenge myself - could I make a dessert without refined sugar that still tastes like dessert? This apple crisp fit the bill, and I'm definitely going to make it again. I'll do my best to translate "fistful" and "pinch" into traditional measurements.