Friday, May 29, 2009

Homemade Herb Croutons and Wilted Swiss Chard Salad

My sweet mama gave us leftover bread crusts from the finger sandwiches she made for the shower. She knew I would find something to do with them. I have always wanted to make herb croutons so we tried it. I thought I would share the recipe.

You need:
3 T olive oil
4 minced garlic cloves
rosemary
thyme or any other herb fresh or dried herb you have on hand
salt and pepper to taste
bread (we used mostly crust because that is what we had and it was stale bread, we left it out overnight)

Steps:
1. Cut the bread into cubes. Araina loved that I trusted her with a knife. She did a great job!

2. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
3. Heat olive oil in medium skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and chopped herbs. Saute until fragrant.
4. Remove from heat, add bread and toss it in the garlic oil until evenly coated.
5. Put bread onto rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
6. Put in oven, bake for 10 minutes, stir, cook for another 8-10 minutes until golden brown. Then you have croutons! Yea!


While the croutons were baking we wanted to whip up a yummy salad to sprinkle them on. Now, my granny has been getting on my case about not posting some of our vegetarian cooking. So here you have it Granny. My girls are raw foods kind of girls, they will eat any leaf offered to them. When they tried Swiss chard for the first time Araina liked it; Fauna, not so much. Fauna thought that she would like it better if we "herbed" it up a bit. So we went out to the garden and gathered some radish sprouts and Swiss chard. Then put our heads together and came up with this recipe for "Wilted Swiss Chard Salad."

This is what we used in our salad:
Swiss chard
radish sprouts
garbanzo beans
little red tomatoes
olive oil
garlic
salt and pepper to taste
rosemary
thyme
croutons

*I didn't include amounts because Fauna actually put most of this recipe together. Boy, was she HEAVY on the rosemary, she always says, "you can never have too much rosemary!"

1. In a medium skillet saute garlic, rosemary and thyme in olive oil until fragrant.
2. Add the garbanzo beans and tomatoes. Stir for about 8 minutes, depending on how crispy you want the beans. Salt and pepper to taste.
3. Tear up the Swiss chard and add to the bean mixture.
Wilt the chard and remove from the heat. 4. Add the croutons and radish sprouts and you have "Wilted Swiss Chard Salad."


It was very yummy, even with the large amount of rosemary! The girls added black olives on the side.


*Don't let their faces fool you, they ate every last bit and plan on making more in the future. See all of the laundry in the background? That is the part of my life that I like to ignore!

13 comments:

Toni said...

what a yummy looking salad, homemade croutons are the best, .

I have the same laundry piles as well, wiht 6 of us and all of us getting into very dirty adventures it is a mountain that will never go away no matter how mcuh I do.

Anonymous said...

Looks Delicious!
You are so funny... nobody would have guessed from the photo that that was a pile of laundry... you came clean when you didn't have to! LOL!

The Magic Onions said...

Looks Delicious!
You are so funny... nobody would have guessed from the photo that that was a pile of laundry... you came clean when you didn't have to! LOL!

Erin said...

Mmm.. that looks sooo yummy! Wish I could get my boys to eat more salad. Might have to try it this weekend!

Anonymous said...

Yum! Love the facial expressions!

Thanks for saying that you'll miss me and are a bit scared for us. I am so touched by your concern. Please send us some pixie dust every now and then ;-).

Hugs to you!

Alisha said...

yum...that looks sooo good!

Shady Lady said...

This looks amazing. I wish Princess would eat anything green. *sigh*

dawn klinge said...

Yum! That salad looks delicious. I remember the first time I made croutons...they were so easy, and good; I couldn't believe I had been buying them for so many years!

Tammy said...

So many yummies on your blog. :)

We just made the chive vinegar this afternoon!!!

Annie said...

See the laundry in the background? Not till you mentioned it!

That looks so good! Would have gone great with my own supper tonight.

Joy said...

My kids love croutons. I'll have to give this a whirl. Thanks! Laundry is the bane of my existance as well. Alas...it never goes away.

sarah in the woods said...

That looks delicious!

Sam said...

That looks so yummy! I must try it.