Lentil salad with cumin vinaigrette
Lentil salad with cumin vinaigrette
And sights of spring in the Upper Midwest
I’m writing to you this week from the one-room log cabin on our property. We spent the weekend knee deep in garden planting and prep along with opening up “our happy place” for the season. The irony of packing in a laptop for an off-grid overnight is not lost on me. It reminds me of a thought provoking essay “Your iPhone is a wild space” by Katherine May (linked below). She does an incredible job exploring the dichotomy of “nature” and “technology” and encourages us to erase the lines between and live within the continuum of human and nature, technology and the wild. I wholeheartedly agree and look forward to writing newsletters from this beloved space for years to come.
In this week’s newsletter, I’m sharing a new recipe for a lentil salad that has quickly become a fan favorite in our household as well as musings on “sights of spring” here in the Upper Midwest.
Lentil salad with cumin vinaigrette
This salad was inspired by “The Best Lentil Salad Ever” compliments of Sarah Britton (@mynewroots) and the PC salad from Milly’s (a beloved pizza parlor in our small town of Hancock, MI). Lentils are an amazing source of protein, folate, and fiber (particularly “resistant starches”). These slow-to-digest fibers feed a healthy gut microbiome and can also blunt blood sugar spikes. Win-win!
Lentil salad with mixed greens + cumin vinaigrette
Servings 8-10
2 cups green lentils
1/2 red onion, finely diced
1 gala apple, finely diced
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup EVOO
1 tbsp pure maple syrup
1 tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp ground coriander
Mix-ins: roasted sunflower seeds, dried cherries, goat cheese crumbles, & mixed spring greens (leaf lettuce, arugula, mustard greens, sorrel, etc)
Fill medium saucepan with 3 inches of water and add lentils to it. Bring to boil, reduce heat to low simmer, cover with lid, and cook for 15 mins until cooked (should still hold texture and be a bit chewy).
While lentils are cooking, assemble the dressing by placing these ingredients in a pint sized mason jar and shake well to combine: EVOO, ACV, salt, cumin, turmeric, coriander, maple syrup. Add a little bit of freshly cracked black pepper, if desired.
When the 15 minutes are up, strain lentils and rinse under cold water for 30 seconds to stop the cooking process. Remove from water and allow remaining water to drain while lentils cool.
Place cooled lentils in large mixing bowl. Add in apples, dried cherries, sunflower seeds, mixed greens, and goat cheese crumbles (optional). Pour over dressing and gently mix to combine.
The lentil salad improves with time as the flavors meld and keeps in the refrigerator for 3-4 days. It’s best to add fresh greens when serving if you are planning on leftovers.
I’d love to know if you make this one! Send me a message or leave a comment below.
Sights of Spring
In a place that averages 250”+ of snow annually, the sights of spring never cease to amaze. This is our 10th year stewarding a 120 acre property in the northern most reaches of Upper Michigan. Each year we yearn for the true “sights of spring” after long winters and fleeting thaws affectionately dubbed “false springs” by Midwesterners alike. If you’ve experienced a false spring, you know the feeling all too well (it’s kind of a like a gut punch). Typically by mid-May, the real thing arrives and it’s glorious. Year-after-year and season-after-season, I’m filled with gratitude for the abundance of Nature’s gifts thriving within the fields and forest of the property we will soon call home.
Serviceberry trees in bloom - Robin Wall Kimmerer describes how the Serviceberry (Amelanchier arborea) is often considered “a calendar plant, so faithful is it to seasonal weather patterns”. I highly recommend her essay (linked below) entitled “The Serviceberry” which explores topics of abundance, reciprocity, and the gift economy.
Foraging for morel mushroms with my son
Wild violets in bloom
Opening up our log cabin for the season
Trout lilies along a spring-fed creek
Wild strawberries in bloom
In the Garden
It’s time for a mid-month garden check-in. We’ve potted up our heirloom tomato starts and moved them to the sunporch along with the brassicas. The soil is dry enough in the garden for working, which means planting onions was on the docket this weekend. We are so thankful to be gifted beautiful dormant onion plants from family friends each year. The bundle is typically a variety of sweet slicers, long-keepers, and even leeks. The dormant plants are from Dixondale Farms and historically do well within our zone 5 gardens. As last year was a tough year, we tried a new technique with landscape fabric to reduce weeds and improve yields. I’ll keep you posted on our progress throughout the season.
Peas are also among the first annual vegetables to be direct sown in the garden. This year I was gifted yellow shelling peas from home cook and gardener Aube Giroux. She is the award winning producer of a video blog, Kitchen Vignettes, on PBS. Her documentary-style cooking videos take the viewer on a culinary journey from the garden (or farm) to the kitchen and ending at the table in short 4-8 minute clips. Click the link below to learn more about these peas and how she continues to honor her mother’s legacy by making her famous Quebec-style pea soup recipe. It’s a privilege to grow these seeds and share this recipe (& story) with you.
Honorable Mentions…
Here you’ll find a few of the essays, videos, etc. mentioned in this week’s newsletter:
- - Essay: “Your iPhone is a wild space”
The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Kitchen Vignettes by Aube Giroux - Episode: Quebec-style Yellow Pea Soup
This newsletter is a work in progress and your feedback is valuable to me. If there are topics of interest or columns you’d like featured, please connect with me and/or leave a comment. Thanks for being here!
Yours in health,
Dr. Michelle
P.S. If you are enjoying this newsletter, I’d love if you’d share it with a home cook, gardener, and/or nature lover in your life!