We’re Back!

Hey! We are BACK!

Katrina here, offering apologies for the long hiatus. One of us went off and wrote a poetry thesis,

Oh hai!

And the other one got hitched!

Wouldn’t it be great if that were her real bouquet?

It’s all terribly exciting. But we have been thinking of you and feeling just lame about our lack of updates. So while I’m not 100% sure we’ll be back at full force immediately, we are making an effort to both blog and to do things worth blogging about!

My first venture back into blogging is a fairly simple little recipe, but one that is super delicious. While working on my thesis (and finishing my other classes, and working) it was easy for me to get a little lazy about food. Unfortunately for my waistline, for me, that means fast food. Or prepackaged grocery store stuff. Lots of it, most of the time. I just couldn’t find the energy to cook. But now that my thesis is bound(!) and submitted, and I have a (fake) diploma in hand (the real one is in the mail), I feel like I should probably go ahead and deal with eating something that could be defined as marginally healthy.

Yesterday, I had dinner with my poet friend Sara. She’s a vegetarian, and I’m trying to let my body down easy after two weeks of wedding/visiting the parents eating (preceded by months of awful grad student food habits). So we decided to be responsible, healthy adults and have a salad! And a mashed sweet potato with goat cheese, because try as I might, I can’t make a salad with no meat or at least french fries and call it dinner (Thanks Pittsburgh!)

I found a recipe for a promising looking salad at Eating Well. They often have delightful looking, reasonably easy, super healthy meal ideas, so i recommend checking them out. I did end up tweaking the recipe a good bit, largely in terms of which veggies I put in. Sara’s not a fan of radishes, and I really love green onions, so we just made some substitutions as we went.

Salad with Orange, Kidney Beans, and Goat Cheese

(a note about amounts: we sort of just eyeballed the amount of each ingredient we wanted in our salad, but these are pretty close measurements for two people, especially if the salad is going to serve as the bulk of the meal.)

1 head butter lettuce (the recipe called for romaine, but the butter lettuce looked so delightful and amazing I couldn’t resist. I think you could really use any leafy green you preferred. I bet it’d be awesome with arugula).

1/2 cup green onions, chopped

1/2 cup green beans, halved or quartered

1 orange, cut into segments

1/2 cup kidney beans, rinsed (roughly half to 3/4 of a can)

1/4 cup of goat cheese, crumbled

Orange Oregano Dressing (recipe below)

So, I’m not going to insult you. You know how to make a salad. Take your salad ingredients. Dump them into a bowl. Toss with wild abandon. End with delicious salad.

Rabbit Noms!

The fancy part of this recipe comes from the dressing (though still very simple.) It’s really delicious and lends an excellent brightness to the whole salad.

Orange Oregano Dressing

1/2 tsp freshly grated orange zest

1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

1/4 cup cider vinegar

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

3/4 teaspoon dried oregano (or 2 teaspoons fresh if you have it!)

salt and pepper

Again, this is pretty simple to do. Add all the ingredients together and whisk (or shake!) until delicious.

Since these are pretty simple (though insanely satisfying) recipes, you get a bonus to pair it with. Take a yam or a sweet potato, wrap it in foil, and throw it in the oven (400) for about half an hour. Take it out, unwrap it, stick it in a bowl, and mash with a fork. Then add about 1/2 cup of goat cheese and mash further. Delicious, and pairs insanely well with the salad.

also pairs well with a glass of white wine!

I hope you guys enjoy my foray into healthy eating. It’s good to be back!