Recipe: Potato Salad with Yogurt, Dill, Curry & Mustard. Lots of Mustard.

We're busy preparing for Rebecca's 2nd birthday party by making some of our favourite salads.  I am a strict mayonnaise hater and mustard lover so this is our family's version of potato salad. 


It's made with new Ontario potatoes, herbs from the garden and a hearty amount of yogurt and mustard.

2 pounds of potatoes
1 cup of organic yogurt
1/4 cup of chives 
1/3 cup of fresh dill
A few springs of fresh parsley
1 teaspoon of curry
1 teaspoon of dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon of mustard seed
1/2 teaspoon of salt
ground pepper to taste

Boil your potatoes for 10 minutes.  Cut them each in half.

Mix your dressing, that's all of the ingredients except the potatoes and parsley.  Add to your potatoes and cover them gently.  Garnish with the parsley and Volia! Who says you can't make friends with salad?

In the past I've used blue potatoes and its just gorgeous, the yellow of the curry looks great with the blue spuds.  Somehow I don't have a picture though.  This time we're enjoying a basket of fresh Ontario potatoes that I bought on Wednesday and bet were still in the ground on Monday. They are heavenly.

Here are last year's blue and purple potato harvest that were promptly turned into this salad for her 1st birthday. 


We'll be posting a few more recipes from this weekend's celebration, just as soon as I actually get a minute to finish making everything, since almost 2 year olds apparently stop napping?! really.

Recipe: Really Really Dill Pickles

After posting the photos of the pickles I’ll be giving to friends and family over the holidays, I realized that I never got around to posting the recipe for these great dill pickles.

This recipe is adapted from the Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving Favourite Dill Pickles recipe.  I doubled this recipe without any issues.  I used the 8 & 16 oz Ball Jar Elite, which are sort of a funny shape for pickles, hence the untraditional dill slices.  They’re a hit though, excellent on or with a sandwich. This recipe should make about 8  x 16 oz jars, the spicing is written out for the 16 oz jars, just half it for the smaller ones.

Although I really like the taste and the crispness is fine, next year I’ll brine them over night in the refrigerator. It just makes a better pickle and its really not that much extra work.

16-20 small pickling cucumbers (about 3lbs/1.5kg)

2 cups white vinegar

2 cups water

2 tbsp pickling salt

1 tbsp granulated sugar

1 head of fresh dill per jar

1 small clove of garlic per jar          

1/2 teaspoon of mustard per jar

 Cut your cucumbers up into the desired shape, slices, hunks, it doesn’t mater.

Combine vinegar, water, salt and sugar in a large stainless steel or enamel saucepan and bring to a boil.

Prepare your hot jars. Place 1 head fresh dill, 1 clove garlic (I used the little bit of garlic I grew this year) and ½ teaspoon of mustard seeds (I found two different colours at the Big Carrot, their organic spice section is phenomenal) in each pint jar. 

Pack cucumbers into jars and pour boiling vinegar mixture over cucumbers to within ½ inch of rim.  Process for 10 minutes.  Please be mindful to follow good canning practices and don’t eat anything that you suspect hasn’t been processed properly.

I’m really pleased with these pickles.  They really pack a punch.  Even though I reduced the spice in the small jars, they’re really dilly.  

Wordless Wednesday: To make up for the onions

This picture makes me feel better about the onions.  Clovey Pickled Beets and Really Dill Pickles, I'm ready for Christmas.