Midsummer Garden

The front yard garden midsummer

The front yard garden midsummer

Our garden this year is thriving! My neighbor generously gave us the tomato plants this spring. I was not sure what they were going to turn out like. They are all yellow this year! We have yellow cherry tomatoes, yellowish orange and huge yellow ones. We were also gifted some lemon basil from another friend that is so wonderful in asian style dishes.  Never before have I grown so much Genovese basil. The plants are so healthy and the flavor is so wonderful. Fresh pesto is a summer pleasure that if buying basil fresh it can get costly. Unfortunately I let my green beans get too tough, they matured it seemed overnight. They were tiny one minute then they suddenly, huge! (read more)

Wild Rice Salad with Blood Orange and Pomegranate Balsamic Vinaigrette

Wild Rice Salad with Blood Orange and Pomegranate Balsamic Vinaigrette

Wild Rice Salad with Blood Orange and Pomegranate Balsamic Vinaigrette

My Mom gave me some wild rice from that she got from a friend in Minnesota, and I have been meaning to experiment with making some dishes with it.  When reading a caption from the package of Singing Pines wild rice, I learned a little about the origin of this rice, and it peaked my curiosity.

August is called “manominikegississ” the month of the rice making moon. Traditionally, the Ojibway and Sioux Indians of Minnesota harvested the “mahomem”  or wild rice with two people in a canoe.  One person poled the boat through the rice bed, while the other, using sticks, knocked the rice kernels into the boat. The rice was then parched; the hulls removed and using a birch bark winnowing basket, the rice was separated from the chaff. The native peoples considered the mahomem a sacred gift from the Great Spirit or Creator. (read more)