MRE...gimme me, gimme me

Meal Ready to Eat. This was last night's dinner. In an attempt to be better about eating leftovers, I smartly stored my leftovers in separate containers to facilitate easy assembly for today's lunch. All that was missing was the convenient snack sized tabasco sauce.


For the pie I made a swiss chard quiche. I couldn't find any one recipe I like so I massed up my own. It was very tasty but not quite recipe worthy yet. I took ample notes and think I know how to tweak it so that it will be better next time. For one I will use a proper pie dish or find my large tart pan- it took too long to bake, but was surprisingly still moist. 


The salad was a riff on something I saw on the New York Times, Temporary Vegetarian (recipe here). I had the red cabbage but only a couple of the other ingredients so I improvised. Here is my version:

Dark Red Cabbage Salad 

• Roughly 1lb of red cabbage, shredded, either by hand or more efficiently by a food processor (I did not want to get another appliance dirty, so I did mine by hand. Both my husband and I agreed that texturally it would have been better finer)
• blackberry perserve or runny jam about 3 tbsp
• 6 Tbsp neutral oil
• 2 Tbsp sherry vinegar
• Salt and pepper
• One tart apple, cored, thinly sliced and cut into bits- save some for garnish or thinly slice some halves.
• crumbled blue cheese. There are so many out there, ours came from Oregon but there are awesome Washington and BC blues, just use your favourite.
• candied walnuts

Put the shredded cabbage in a serving bowl. Combine preserves, oil and sherry vinegar, pour as little or as much onto your cabbage as you like and toss. Starting off with less means you can add more if it isn't sufficiently coated. The dressing will make the cabbage very dark so taste and check for balance of oil and vinegar. Add salt and pepper, taste the cabbage again. Add the chopped apple and toss. Crumble nuts and cheese on individual portions. 

• I like to let my kids add their own condiments, it gives them a sense of control over what they are eating, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

In the photo I added thinly sliced celery to lighten it up- and husband ate all of the cheese last night!

photo by me.