Green Goddess Salad

After bat­ten­ing down the hatches to any­thing new on their din­ner plates for the past few months, I’m sens­ing the kids might be about to open a win­dow. Well, maybe not open­ing exactly. Maybe more like crack­ing. The prob­lem is that they egg each other on at the table. Julian will have a fork almost to his mouth and if Esme says she doesn’t like the pasta sauce he will put it down. Work­ing in our favour is Julian’s new favourite book, Lit­tle Pea by Amy Krouse Rosen­thal, about a lit­tle pea who prefers spinach to the candy he’s expected to eat for din­ner. Thank you Amy Krouse Rosen­thal for get­ting my two year old to chime, “Me love spinach!” Thank you so much. And Esme seems to be com­ing around again to try­ing new things.

So I’m act­ing fast and bring­ing back some of my own favourites. Like salad. How I’ve missed sal­ads… Tra­di­tion­al­ists among you will scan this recipe and feel like it can­not be a Green God­dess with­out tar­ragon. I hear you. But I just find tar­ragon so bossy. And look­ing at the way the Green God­dess has changed over the years I felt okay with tweak­ing it to my own lik­ing. This salad also mim­ics one I have a cou­ple of times a week from a cafe around the cor­ner from the SPC office, Cafe Bernate. They call it a Verde and it’s hardy enough to get me through my typ­i­cal 3 pm carb crav­ings. My ver­sion is really easy to make. Once you’ve steamed the aspara­gus all you have to do is some chop­ping and you’re done. For now we’re strictly a sauce on the side kind of house when it comes to the kids but I love the creamy, rich­ness of this dress­ing. So worth the bit of effort to get beyond my usual bal­samic and olive oil combo. 

Pho­tos by Maya Vis­nyei