Seasonal Salad tasting at Celebrate Fall

October 23rd was a beautiful crisp Fall day on which the Arboretum hosted its annual "Celebrate Fall" festival. This was my first experience at this wonderful event for families, children and teens.

The theme of this year's festival was "It's Harvest Time" and being the resident Square Foot Gardener in charge of growing vegetables and herbs, I was asked to create a special tasting for our guests to sample at the event. Inspired by some of the cool weather crops which can be found growing in our new Square Foot Garden beds located outside the Stackhouse Education Center, I chose to make a Seasonal Fall Salad.

Since the garden has red cabbage, purple cauliflower, broccoli and carrots, they became the key ingredients of the salad. In addition to those vegetables, I added dried cranberries, raisins, pumpkin and sunflower seeds. Finally, to properly dress the salad, I prepared a honey Dijon vinaigrette made with honey harvested from the Arboretum's very own beehives, located on premise.

Approximately 170 people, both adults and children stopped by the tasting table and sampled the fall salad. They gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up!

If you would like to try your hand at preparing the salad at home, you can find the recipe and the accompanying honey Dijon dressing by clicking here.

Happy Fall! Enjoy your Veggies!