Welcoming Winter with Sunshine and Salad

There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you.... In spring, summer and autumn people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.  ~Ruth Stout

Today we are welcoming winter with a burst of sunshine!  Despite the fact I am an absolute cold frog, I do love winter.  The quietness, the closing of the house to keep out the chill,  the snuggling up with one's family.  I love quiet stretches where I savour belonging to myself and to my family.  The brisk chilliness, the nestling cosiness, the fun of rugging up in blankets I'm knitting.  There are some things I miss such as seeing and touching my children's sweet, soft skin, eating and playing outdoors, hanging the washing on my outdoor clothesline :)  

There is also the food we consume. I love the wintry curries, casseroles, slow-cooked for hours, nourishing tired bodies at the end of the day with warm saucy yumminess.  Delicious soups containing vegetables and pulses both warming and nutritious.  Yet I miss salads, raw veges.  Strange really as all the greens grow so well during winter in the cool clime in which I dwell.

So I farewelled Autumn and today welcomed winter with a delicious salad which I must share with you. You see so much of it came from my garden and when I finally get around to deciding where to plant more, much more of this will come from my garden as well.  The Emerald City Salad contains lettuce, capsicum, rocket, parsley and chives from my garden.  I added to that english spinach, fennel, baby cabbage from the market.  Next time I'd like it to contain swiss chard and kale from my garden. Well, maybe down the track.  I had never thought of adding rice to my lemon~EVOO~garlic salad dressing to let it absorb the flavour and I wondered whether it might become gluggy but it didn't, it was fabulous.   As wild rice is ludicrously expensive here in my opinion at $40/kg, I combined wild rice with brown rice.  This salad is so nutritious and tasty, so healthy and inviting.  A fitting way to use the burgeoning greens outside my door.  Yesterday I served it with our BBQ steak, today it was a delicious lunch with my tuna, tomato and cheese on organic sourdough wholemeal spelt toast.

So snuggle up, eat well and savour belonging to yourself during these months of winter.  To my friends in the north, enjoy all that the warmth of summer brings you.