SPRING IS HERE!!! Living in the Midwest, this is a very exciting time for us! The snow is disappearing, the weather is warming up. Something about this time of the year makes me feel very happy. It’s nice to not be closed in the house, to not have to bundle up to go outside. I’m a runner, so it also means I don’t have to worry about ice on the trails anymore!
In order to celebrate Spring, I’ve made a wonderful, light salad with the perfect summer fruit, strawberries!!! Let’s start with frisee. What is it? What does it look like? Why isn’t there any frisee in the photos attached to this post???? Frisee is a type of chicory plant in the endive family. It’s often referred to as curly endive. It looks like lettuce (dandelion greens or arugula, in my opinion), but it’s not! It has narrow leaves and a bitter, peppery flavor. So, even though this post has the word frisee in the title, it does not contain any frisee. Why? Because Mr. FBBQ bought this ridiculously oversized bag of mixed greens (baby spinach, kale, and chard) and I had bought some arugula for a different recipe, so we had a lot of greens to use up. The mix of greens we had worked great for this recipe, though.
So, where do we start? Let’s gather our goodies. We will need strawberries (unlike the frisee, we will be using strawberries), the greens, wheat berries, snap peas, a red onion, mint, white wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, and maple syrup. The recipe doesn’t call for the following, but I added them because they make a salad better and I had them on hand: a red bell pepper (leftover from Mr. FBBQ’s recipe), baby carrots, little tomatoes, sprouts, and a cucumber.
First, let’s cook the wheat berries. They take a while to cook and then we will want them to cool. Fun fact about wheat berries, they are the seeds used to grow wheat grass. We go through a lot of wheat grass in our house, as the cats love to eat it then barf it up. Mr. FBBQ loves cleaning up cat barf. It might be his second favorite thing to do after cleaning the cat boxes. Just kidding!!! He hates those things. But, wheat grass is good for cats’ digestive systems. It helps prevent them from getting hairballs. This is a great topic of conversation for a food blog!
While the wheat berries are cooking, we can put together the salad part. Add the greens to a bowl, along with the snap peas, onion, cucumber, tomatoes, bell pepper, carrots, and sprouts. Mr. FBBQ and I bought some sprouts that went bad really quickly. Not good. Tip: Don’t eat slimy sprouts. They may upset your stomach. Or worse. (Yet another great food blog topic)
Next, we will make the dressing. In a food processor or blender, mix some of the strawberries, some maple syrup, Dijon mustard, white wine vinegar, and some of the mint. I was very excited about this dressing and it did not disappoint!! Delicious!!
Add the cooled wheat berries to the salad, top with strawberry slices and dressing and a sprig of mint. Hopefully eat this salad on your deck in the spring sun!!
