Feelings and a winter salad

With the knife steadily thumping against the cutting board, I chopped the ripe pomegranate into sections. Several seeds spilled out, their juices coloring the wood. I slid them into the palm of my left hand and popped the bright, bursted bits into my mouth. The tang and the sweet played on my taste buds; the seeds wedged themselves into the grooves of my back teeth. I tried to pry them out with the tip of my stained tongue. Nope. They seemed to sink deeper. Nothing more than annoyance, just an annoyance. I'll get over it. The flavor still holds me over, keeps me lifted. An annoyance is nothing. Just nothing. Right? 

~~~

I crave salads sometimes. Crunchy vegetables, juicy fruit, smooth toasted nuts, a light dressing that binds it all together. Granted, my eagerness to shovel salad into my mouth happens after a long session of pilates or a night of binging on tortilla chips and spicy salsa and catching up on The Mindy Project. (I did the latter last night.) 

The best salads are infinitely adaptable, hit all the right flavor and texture notes, and are filling. This salad does just that. It fueled the rest of my slow but productive day. 

~~~ 

Tart Winter Salad
Loosely adapted from Smitten Kitchen

2 T. sour cream
2 T. mustard
1 T. grape seed oil
1 T. rice vinegar
pinch of salt
1/2 T. agave nectar

1/2 head of cabbage 

1 Granny Smith apple 

several handfuls of pomegranate seeds 

12 baby carrots 

handful of toasted walnuts 

Combine the first 6 ingredients in a large bowl. 

Shred your cabbage and toss your shreds into the large bowl. Use a mandolin to thinly slice the carrots. Add that into the bowl. Slice your apple into matchsticks. Mix in with pomegranate seeds and toasted walnuts gently and enjoy! 

Apple cake brings new beginnings

January. The word seems so distant when it rolls off my tongue, even though I'm living through it right now. The last few months have been tough and rewarding, sad and fleeting. I'm living a fast paced life, each day seeming shorter than the last.

I baked a bit over the holiday break. A banana bread to use some molting fruit. A mediocre sour cream coffee cake to satisfy my cinnamon sugar craving. Mini gâteaux au chocolat fondant de Nathalie. Matcha macarons with cringe worthy cream cheese filling. Lemon macarons with tart lemon curd. My admiration for these treats were fleeting. They were sweet treats, a moment of "oh, that's good" but the "good" wasn't sustained. I'd forget about the bite just moments after. Nothing wooed me over until I baked this apple cake.



I thank procrastination and Jess from Sweet Amandine for bestowing this warm cinnamon specked, hearty cake with softened bits of apples, bursts of raisins, and crunchy walnuts upon me. Though it is January, I lean to this autumn cake. It is just that good. It wraps you up, keeps you warm and fed.

After school, my backpack bursting at its seams, my to do list growing longer and longer, I'd take handfuls of fruit (blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, green grapes) and a thick wedge of this cake to my living room. Sitting in an arm chair, my feet kicked up on a window sill, I looked outside through my bay window, into the backyard. Greenery rarely impresses me. I was looking at trees but seeing the cake. It was a temporary remedy, at most, but a remedy nonetheless. For that moment, those ten minutes in that chair, I was safe and warm.

The bits of anxiety and the patters of panic would bite me once the work was started.

No one said high school was easy.



Click to get the recipe.