Oh, Yum!

It’s gloriously sunny here right now and is supposed to stay that way at least until I get to walk my dog through the park after work today, I’m so glad about that!  Yesterday was an absolutely wicked storm, winds so strong we had to lock the front door of our business unit….and sideways rain, that’s always so nice!  Not exactly stellar dog walking weather.

I created a recipe earlier this week that I thought some of you may be interested in.  I needed some carrots a couple of weeks ago and mentioned it while we were at Costco.  I was subsequently talked into buying a 10 pound bag of carrots and hadn’t really made a noticeable dent in them.  Cooked carrots only take you so far in life before you can’t stand them anymore.  While playing with my food processor this weekend I decided that the carrots would become infinitely more useful if I shredded them and then stored them in the fridge upstairs, ready to throw into whatever veggie I happened to be cooking.  They were shredded so uniformly and such a gorgeous bright orange that I was inspired to make carrot salad so as to appreciate their colour and texture.  The result was the best salad I’ve had in YEARS.  I’ve made it three times now, each time with about 4-5 cups of shredded carrots.  I’m in love.  If you can believe it, it’s carrot-salad-comfort-food.  Take a look:

CARROT SALAD

4-5 cups shredded carrot (medium shred)

1 apple (small chop)

1.5 cups combined of blueberries, craisins, raisins or currants…any or all

1/3 to ½ cup WellFed Mayo

               Mix into the mayo, 1 tsp paprika (not smoked) and 1 tsp ginger (or more if you love ginger)

And for the topping that absolutely makes the whole thing?  Slowly toast sliced almonds in avocado oil (or fat of choice) in a frying pan on the stove.   While toasting, sprinkle with a teaspoon of dried ginger and a nice amount of rock salt and toss all in.  Toast until golden.   *toast slowly (medium low) or you risk burning the ginger

Mix the carrots and fruits in a large bowl.  Mix the spices into the mayo and then stir it into the carrots.  Serve out and then top with the warm (not hot) almonds.

I hope you love this salad, I personally need to stop making it.  It’s a bit high in carbs and it’s using up my mayo at an alarming rate.  But it is, oh so good!

In shampoo news, while I was really quite happy with my original shampoo recipe, I felt inclined to take it one step further and change the recipe, ultimately eliminating the castile soap.  The result was hair that looked like it had been washed in bacon fat.  It was awful….I kept blowdrying it thinking it was soaking wet….alas……it was not.  So gross.  So…..I immediately reverted back to commercial shampoo while plotting my next shampoo move.  I do have to say that I think my hair looked better with the first homemade shampoo than it does with the commercial shampoo so I’m going to make the original recipe again with a couple additions (more gelatin and some pure aloe vera).  I may, slowly over time, reduce the castile soap in each recipe until I get it to where I’m using the bare minimum required for my particular hair chemistry.  I also thought, that before I go back to homemade shampoo, I’m going to go and get my hair cut on Friday after work.  It’s in my February goals and it’s been 5 months (which is actually a record short time in between for me!) so it’s probably time.  For those of you who asked about the original recipe, I’ve listed it below:

 

¼ cup coconut milk, canned or homemade

¼ cup castile soap (like Dr Bronner….I used peppermint)

1 teaspoon avocado oil

1 tsp gelatin

Essential oils (optional and I did not use)

 

My revision is going to include less soap, a bit more gelatin and some aloe vera.  I’ll let you know how it goes!

That’s all for me today, a dog walk after work (4.8km, I think), Scotch Eggs for dinner and then it’s my TV night, looking forward to it!

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