It has finally come around to spring in the northeast. It looks like we'll have snow until May in our sugarbush! Whenever warm days return I think about my garden, and my body starts craving those fresh spring green shoots and salads!
Here are two healthy ways to spruce up your spring salads with our delicious organic maple syrup.
1. Make your own salad dressing.
Most salad dressing from the store comes with all sorts of fillers and unhealthy sweeteners. Also store-bought dressings can be expensive! I make my own at home using evoo, vinegar, and a little bit of our maple syrup. That way I'm getting the great flavor of maple, along with a little sweetness, and the extra vitamins and minerals that natural maple syrup has which other sweeteners, even organic cane sugar and honey do not.
Here's the recipe for a new dressing I made this spring:
Maple-wasabi dressing.
- 1/2 tsp wasabi powder
- 1 tsp maple syrup (to mix with the wasabi powder)
- 1/4 cup maple syrup (to mix with the oil and vinegar)
- 1/4 cup rice vinegar
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- the juice from one lime
- 1/4 tsp salt
- pepper to taste
- 1/8" slice of ginger, chopped
You can simply throw it all together, but here is a hint that I learned while making this. Mix the wasabi with the 1 tsp of maple syrup in a small jar first. Cover the jar for 5 min to let the flavor develop. Then add in your salt and pepper to the wasabi mixture. Next add your vinegar to the mixture and use that to swish around the thick wasabi paste so that it can be poured and doesn't stay stuck to the bottom of your bottle! Then add the rest of the ingredients.
2. Top your salad with maple roasted nuts
This is an easy way to make any average salad, an amazing salad!
- Throw a handful of whatever kind of nuts you have in your cupboard into the skillet, for the salad I made I used walnuts.
- Add in some maple syrup, I usually will add enough to just barely coat the bottom of the pan.
- Then turn on the heat and constantly stir until the water that is in the starts maple boils off.
- Turn the heat down low and constantly stir until you start to get these stringy sweet bits between the nuts as you move them around (this is the syrup getting thicker).
- Then you can add a bit of salt, pepper, and other spices (I love rosemary, but it didn't really go with the theme of my wasabi dressing).
- Continue to stir the nuts over low heat, until they appear dry-ish. Throw them in the salad, yum!
- That's it! Delish!