Blood Orange, Fennel and Avocado Salad

Exciting news: I have a job! Yesterday was my first day, though I was training and only there for a few hours. But so far, I'm pretty excited about it. I work in a little teahouse which has a huge assortment of looseleaf tea - and I LOVE tea. I have been stressing about not being able to get a job here for the summer, but I feel like I really lucked out with this place. So far, so good - I didn't break anything and didn't get fired, and people are quite friendly.

Though, now I might have too much to do - I am also taking two classes this summer and was offered a part-time job coaching. On top of that, I finally have my MRI appointment on Wednesday and am desperately hoping that I might be able to row, or at least train, this summer. If I had 36 hours in a day or never needed to sleep, that would be great. I have some figuring out to do, but this is vastly better than a week ago when I thought that I would be jobless and injured for the summer.

What's more, right now I have not only these two jobs, but also finals and an impending move hanging over my head. I am currently spending a lot of time in the library daydreaming about food while waiting for my GIS commands to execute (If you are curious, GIS = Geographic Information Science. If you aren't, I'm just waiting for my computer to do stuff). Last night I was here until the library closed, but my fantasies were finally rewarded when I came home to this truly dream-worthy salad.

I have to be honest, I only made this salad because of the breathtaking assortment of blood orange and fennel salads I have been seeing on the internet. I have never used fennel before in my life, and really had no idea what to do with the strange mandrake-like bulb which I picked up at the market. I looked at it in confusion for a few minutes, wondering why I had bought such a strange thing. Then I nibbled one end to see what it tasted like. And then I tried to figure out how to cut it. Did I cut it properly? Is there a proper way to cut fennel? I really couldn't tell you, but I can tell you that this salad is amazing. Seriously. It's kind of like a dessert. But it's a salad. Magic!

I don't know what it is about this salad - the combination of creamy avocado, crunchy fennel with its tantalizing hint of licorice, and sweet orange slices and dressing somehow creates the most amazing mix of flavours. I seriously want to eat this salad every single day. Which is good, because I don't really know what else to do with the rest of my fennel.

Ingredients:

• Slices of fennel
• Blood orange, peeled and sliced
• Sunflower sprouts
• Baby kale (arugula would work as well)
• Thinly sliced avocado
• Dressing (see below)

Really, that's all there is to it. Chop up a few things, put them in a bowl, and pour some dressing overtop.

Dressing:

• 1/3 cup orange juice
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp agave nectar
• 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 tbsp mustard

Shake it all up in a jar, and pour however much you want over your salad! You can omit the agave nectar if you want your dressing less sweet, since there is already plenty of sweetness from the orange juice. This is a pretty low-oil dressing, so you may want to play with the amount of olive oil if you want a more traditional consistency.

The Mermaid Cafe is now on twitter! Follow me @themermaidcafe_ for recipes and random thoughts.

If you want to check out another blood orange and fennel salad, Kiran Tarun has an absolutely gorgeous one here.

I am submitting this to Deb's Souper Sundays roundup... yes, it is a salad, but I'm sure it will make some friends there. :)

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Orange-Topped Chai Rice Pudding

So, I finally told someone that I had created a blog. And then she mentioned it to my mom, who sent me a guilt-inducing "what blog?" message... Oops. Bad daughter moment? Anyways, the moral of the story is that I am no longer the only person reading this blog (hi mom! hi auntie cath!) and suddenly I've stopped posting anything. I guess it's strange to know that someone will actually read this.

In the last few days I got a cold, decided to give up on ever rowing again, mourned the end of my rowing career, panicked about being jobless and not rowing all summer, decided that I couldn't quit rowing, finally quit rowing, accepted that I quit rowing, refused to accept my acceptance that I quit rowing, applied for some jobs, got hired (I think?), got excited about getting hired until I was stranded in a cold metro station for so long that I could no longer feel my feet, passed 400 pageviews (rookie moment, I know), and got an appointment for an MRI which made me determine once and for all that I would not, in fact, give up on rowing just yet. For now.

On top of being somewhat sick and really confused, the little food that I made was largely experimental and either did not turn out or photographed horribly and left me with little to post here. I had wanted my first I-have-at-least-two-readers-now post to play it a little on the safe side, but instead I have a post full of run-on sentences and culinary experimentation. Forgive me.

Before all of this I did come up with a really strange but surprisingly tasty recipe. I quite frequently throw things in a pot and see what happens, but it's hard to explain what I end up with. This is, I guess, coconut-chai rice pudding which I decided to cover with an orange ginger glaze purely because I had orange juice in my fridge and I thought it looked cute. But somehow, it worked out that the creamy and warmly spiced pudding was actually accented nicely by the sweet and tangy orange glaze.

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Orange Beet Quinoa Salad

This weekend, a friend from high school was in town and came by for lunch. I rarely see her, but always really enjoy catching up with her. She is such a sunny and energetic person, and the day was bright and sunny. This punchy and flavourful quinoa salad was the perfect thing for the spring-like day, before being walloped by this week's snow storm.

The sweet orange, salty feta, and vinegary beets complemented each other nicely, and were rounded off by the more hearty and subtle red quinoa on a bed of baby kale. This dish was full of bright and distinctive flavours, which accentuated each other without being overwhelming and brought us both back for seconds. Oh, and my favourite part? My aunt gave me the beets, which she had grown and pickled herself. How lucky am I?

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