January 18th: Carrot Salad & Spinach and Pine Nuts

My friend Susan recently started a blog tracking her progress of eating 100 salads in 100 days: a noble goal. I thought her quick recipe for carrot salad, inspired by her days in France, sounded good and gave it a go tonight. She didn’t post a recipe per se, so here’s what I did:

Carrot Salad

4 carrots, grated

½ cup raisins

¼ cup toasted pine nuts or other nuts

2 tbsps olive oil

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Combine all ingredients. If time allows, leave salad to sit at room temperature (or overnight in the refrigerator) to allow the flavours to blend.

Makes 4 servings.

Except, when I made it, I forgot to add the nuts. Susan says in her post she had added almonds. As I was eating the salad, I was saying, this is good, but it could use something. Since I had pine nuts on my plate in the spinach dish, I scooped a few over to the carrots and voilà, the carrot salad was complete. I simply should have read the post more closely! Don’t leave out the nuts!

Also on the menu was a spinach, pine nut and garlic stir-fry which was tasty. Seemed to please my spinach-loving sister guest. I recommend reducing the salt, perhaps by half, and you’ll be good to go.

Served with rice and “Fearless” Fried Chicken.