Hmph. Although I'm very grateful we did NOT get the 6-12 inches of snow originally forecast, there is still a dusting of snow on the ground. It's April 16th - that's just wrong! They keep flip-flopping on what might happen, but there's still the potential for 2-4 inches today. The silver lining? I don't have to break out my spring wardrobe yet - very little of which fits.
I'm a bit behind on posting recipes. First, I'm going to go back about one week to Easter Brunch. My MIL hosted the brunch and she had lots of tasty items on the menu. I didn't get pictures of everything and in fact, I'm surprised I got pictures of anything - there was a lot going on in that house with the four of us, 2 SILs, one BIL and four nieces. Oh, and Bailey too. On the menu - a ham, assorted muffins, a fruit salad, sautéed cabbage, a quinoa salad, an asparagus tart and a Lemon-Raspberry French Toast Strata. Everything was delicious.
The quinoa salad was very good - it would make a great side dish for a summer cookout. We skipped the scallions due to one onion-hater in the group, and also skipped the mint. If I made it again - and I plan to - I would still skip the mint (I don't care for mint in savory dishes), but I would definitely keep the scallions, or perhaps better yet, substitute chives instead. The recipe calls for steaming the quinoa - I was interested if this would make a difference in the texture, but not interested enough to go through the extra and inconvenient steps necessary to steam it - we just cooked it on the stovetop like you would white rice (quinoa can also be cooked like white rice in the rice cooker).
This was a simple salad that let the flavors of the fresh ingredients shine through. I thought that the addition of butter to the salad was unusual - I would normally think of olive oil going in a salad like this - and it certainly was delicious with butter, but I'd venture to guess that olive oil would be fine too if you're worried about saturated fats.
Everyone loved the aspargus tart. This tart is very similar to one I've made from Martha Stewart's Everyday Food, but this tart calls for the cherry tomatoes and parmesan cheese in addition to the asparagus and Gruyere. It's very easy to put together, it's elegant and it's delicious. The MS tart does not call for blanching the asparagus first and as I recall, it worked just fine, so feel free to skip this extra step if you wish.
All in all, a delicious meal. Thanks Memom!
On a side note....have you seen Martha's newly updated website? They've revamped it and many of the recipes and crafts now have videos that show you exactly what to do! How cool is that? I'm a visual learner and actually seeing something done, as opposed to just reading the instructions, can be quite invaluable.
Back tomorrow with a stuff chicken breast recipe from this weekend..........
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