tomato and crouton salad

seeded from: quinoa salad
budded from: quinoa salad
shoutouts to: smitten kitchen

Dear jie-jie,

Tonight I made a tomato and crouton salad! I basically followed smitten kitchen's recipe but thought it was fairly similar to our quinoa salad so decided to not start a new seed. I think I enjoy pretty much all variations of bread, tomato, basil, and cheese, whether it's in a salad or a sandwich or in a pasta. You really can't go wrong with this combo!

I finally went to the grocery store today and it was really great to be back in my own apartment and cooking. Also, here's a picture of my kitchen! I figure I'll send in pictures of our apartment piecemeal so look forward to THAT!

Ginger Lemon Tea

seeded from: itself
budded from: itself

Hi mei-mei, I don't know if this is the recipe I sent you last time, but I keep having to write this down for others, so I'm creating a post for it.  I took the pictures in 2011, but never got around to posting this.  Sorry!

6 cups water
1/2 cup fresh ginger slices (~3" piece of ginger root, sliced thin)
1/2 cup honey
3-4 lemons, juiced

1. Bring water and ginger to a boil in a pot, then lower heat to a simmer and cover for half an hour.  Sometimes I just turn of the stove and let it steep if I'm going out, as it just makes it even stronger (might be all in my head).
2. Add honey and stir until dissolved.  I've also used a mixture of honey and sugar before, as well as steeping lemon peels at this point. It's all to taste, but you want something strong and sweet, as it's a bit like a simple syrup.  Now that I'm typing this up, steeping some lavender kind of sounds nice, too.
3. Add lemon juice and pour into a container.  
4. To serve: half cup of the syrup, and half of water/wine/club soda. 

In the winter, I like this drink hot; In the summer, I like it cold and carbonated.  But it's a great base for lots of different drinks!  Tip: if I find good and young ginger, I tend to slice it and freeze in small bags so I can make this whenever I get the urge.

quinoa salad

seeded from: itself

budded from: itself

shoutouts to: blythe

It's our first seed!

A quick explanation of our site before we jump right in. The idea is to have a couple of starting points of inspiration, or seeds, and then see what both our kitchens come up with. We don't really know where this will lead us and maybe both of us will get too busy to actually work on this but I, personally, am SUPER excited.

OK! Let's go! I've been obsessed with this salad since blythe made it for our Yosemite trip and have been sadly trying to replicate that magical experience since then. This was also my first foray into quinoa and am hugely enjoying it!

The beauty of this salad is that it's incredibly flexible. Instead of or in addition to these herbs you could have mint or parsley. Blythe roasted the tomatoes with garlic before putting them in the salad. I want to have this with feta too sometime.

making quinoa

This is probably too simple for all of you out there, but this is how we made our quinoa for our next post.

quinoa

1 cup quinoa

2 cups water

For each cup of quinoa put two cups of water into the pot with it. Bring the pot to a boil on medium heat and then bring it down to low heat and let it simmer for 15 minutes or so. You can tell when your quinoa is done because the little sprout will have popped out.

inception

Sipping ginger lemon soda with my sister while browsing the web on a warm August afternoon. Ideas circling in our heads on future possibilities, it's a good beginning.