Greetings, all!
Well, after a month busy with traveling to celebrate our birthdays – highlights coming soon – Hubby and I are back in Atlanta, which is abloom with spring flowers. There’s also quite the tree orgy going on with pollen showing up on our cars any time they’re outside for more than, oh, 30 minutes. Hubby has been sneezing like crazy, and even I’m having to take allergy meds.
We’re getting a little bit of a break at the moment with a slight cool snap, which means it was the perfect time for me to pull out one of my favorite spring recipes, Italian Turkey Sausage and Escarole Soup. This is a great time of year for it because escarole is in season and we’re still having evenings cool enough for soup. It’s also super easy. You only have to chop the onion and garlic on the front end, then do the rest of the chopping as previous steps cook. By the way, there are about three to four roma tomatoes per cup if you’re wondering.
Alas, I didn’t drink wine with this soup, although it pairs beautifully with a hearty white. I opted instead for the Reformation Jude, a tripel style beer from a brewery near Atlanta. It went really well.
In keeping with the healthy theme for the weekend, okay, penance for having so much fun while we traveled, I found this recipe for Tuna-Quinoa Toss. Oddly, it’s just for one serving – because everyone has a quarter cup of cooked chickpeas lying around, right? – so I scaled it up to be six servings with a few modifications. Here’s what I did:
Ingredients:
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1/4 tsp kosher salt
Dash of black pepper (or to taste)
2 cups cooked quinoa
1 can chickpeas
1 1/2 cups chopped English cucumber
3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/2 package San Marzano tomatoes (small plum-looking tomatoes, you could just do one regular-sized package of cherry or grape tomatoes), quartered
1 bunch asparagus, hard bottoms snapped off, cut into 1-inch pieces, and blanched
One 2.6 oz package and one 6 oz package solid white tuna in water
Procedure:
Mix first six ingredients in one bowl. Mix rest of ingredients in another. Pour dressing over grains and veggies and toss to combine.
That’s it! Super easy, and it comes together quickly even if you need to cook the quinoa. It was really good, and it’s also a nice canvas for whatever vegetables happen to be in season that you like, hence the addition of the asparagus. No alcohol pairing with this one – I went to Pilates later in the afternoon.
Have a lovely week!