Monday: manic, meatless, monsoon'y, muscular

This morning I chaperoned Ol's class field trip to a local recycling center. One of his very best buddies rode with us, and darn are those little boys precious. I find the recycling center totally cool, so you can imagine how most of the kiddos felt. A front loader here, a giant conveyor belt there. Rain be damned, the field trip was awesome. Hours later I hurried home to cook dinner for my sweet nonagenarians, then delivered it, picked Jack up, made 2+ dozen miniature collard green hand-pies and later scurried to the gym for a session with my trainer. It was awesome but for a full 45 minutes afterwards, I was on the verge of puke. Back home to prep and construct a magnificent MM (meatless Monday) dinner salad: dandelion greens slicked with an orange-pomegranate molasses-sherry vinegar dressing (because T thinks the dandelions are too bitter so to offset that, I made this sweet'ish dressing; dandelion greens are so good and so good for you; it worked); roast carrots; fresh chevre; candied walnuts; the fresh peas that I shelled yesterday; tomatoes; challah croutons; and some endive and chives. Bellissima! Perfetto!

There was a slight mishap while candying the walnuts. It seems I didn't beat the egg white until quite foamy enough and, as such, some of the nuts looked both candied and scrambled. Revolting. Those went into the trash; the fittest made it into the salad. Kitchen oops! No worries.