Provencal Salad

Hello Everyone,

I am still slowly recovering from March Madddnnesssss......I am hearing from almost everyone, how difficult it was with so many of the deepest kind of challenges.
I have a suspicion I have a minute of respite here so I am stealing time to make this post.
Soon I will be able to move back into my bedroom.
I picked up a piece of furniture from IKEA yesterday because I found nothing else anywhere and I got tired of looking for something with ''just so'' dimensions. This one particular situation {of several}  I am talking about has been with termites, unparalleled tiny terminators which I didn't know could cause so much damage or STRESS, especially with me when I am watching my furniture, floor and sauna being turned into paper because they were eating away at them.
But we insisted on Natural as the fumigation tenting procedure is NOT what I wanted to do as it would kill everything Green I have been growing including on the entire house itself like Mr. Repens,  and the termite guys were all loathe to see this garden and the Ficus Repens on the house be destroyed and didn't want us to go that route either....not to mention the expense of removing all your foods and having to sleep in a hotel for days etc......what a horrid mess and expensive unnecessary process.
We went with a natural remedy called Timbor because the man who chose this product had a father who used the fumigation chemicals and tenting and after so many years of handling these chemicals he became a vegetable and the son had to care for him out of a wheelchair in his final years....so the son, now elderly himself, choose a natural product which is used extensively in California because they are more GREEN in mind and body there than the east coast here, and this man has had success with using this product for over 50 years now.
 After having the house treated I can say so far I have not seen those horrid little piles of wood pellets on my floor or sauna. My sauna is very important to me, it is a far infra red sauna and it saved my life from chemicals including mercury. It is incredibly beneficial to my health and I feel so good and clean inside and out when I use it and I didn't want to let it go. They said time will tell but it looks good.
Soooooo, in my bedroom I had to get rid of a piece of furniture I had that was made of bamboo and a basket that was holding my CD's.....because they were harboring the tiny terminators too. But I did find a nice piece of white furniture which THANK  GOD  I  DO  NOT  HAVE  TO  PAINT  BECAUSE  IT  IS  ALREADY  WHITE !!!
I cannot tell you how much I am relieved of not having to paint, as if any of you know, I have been painting this entire house inside and out and I am sooooo over it all.....am fixed for life now, so no painting for me anymore.
Now I just have to wait for John to put it together for me. It is a nice bookshelf with doors from top to bottom, but the top half is glass and the bottom half of the doors are solid so you only see the inside from the top. I need the private storage and with the glass I can have some nice shelf space to display things nicely which I am actually finding I am in enough of a calm place now to entertain with a small degree of fun-ness as to how to do this.....almost feeling playful which tells me I may not be so damaged after all.
Will take pics of that and post soon.

But this post again, is about a beautiful fun Provencal Salad which I wondered about one day, googled and made the next :D, and it was delicious and I encourage anyone to make it if you so desire as it is both delicious and very healthy complete with all necessary nutrients.
I do not know how "authentic" it is, and I do not much care but it is quite good.

I started off in my Garden which is quite a pleasure now since everything is doing so well, and I have lots of greens.....so I picked out some fresh lettuce, plenty of herbs, arugula, and mustard which came back from last year to my great joy.....I simply cut off all the leaves, some were good, some not, and it started to come back and grew large and healthy again.....I can do this with quite a number of greens it turns out.



I put on 4 eggs to hardboil and as they cooked I picked out the greens

sorry pics are bad, but I believe you get the idea anyway :D  these are radicchio and lettuces

 radiccio coming along, I love how they grow in the center in spirals with deep red veins..

 




lettuces

a great variety in a bowl that was way too small for all I picked :D





 
a humongous mustard leaf.....I find it interesting that the first generation of these greens didn't taste much like mustard but this second generation definitely tastes like mustard and are so wonderful in sandwiches.

 









  tore the greens into small pieces and put everything in a large bowl.
 
 added olives and sliced onions and walnuts, you can do whatever you like, I used what I had

 




  When the eggs were cool I cut them into quarters and added them

  and then the beautiful dressing which I got from this site.

~ Classic Provencal Dressings by Wolfgang Puck

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1/4 cup Dijon mustard

2 tablespoon s garlic, minced

2 tablespoon  shallots, minced

1 1/2 cup s extra virgin olive oil

kosher salt

Fresh ground white pepper

Sugar, pinch

Pour into a nice cruet......

*Update: I DID just make this again, and I revised a few things in this dressing. I personally just use a teaspoon of garlic and a teaspoon of Raspberry Vinegar and mustard, not as much as he does.....I prefer the flavor of mustard and lemon and no sugar...this recipe is merely a guideline for your preferences in my opinion.  Serve yourself the amount of salad you want and add the dressing from cruet. Last time I poured over the entire salad but if you don't eat it all, it will get soggy. .......toss gently and enjoy!
I enjoyed it very much for two days, and after typing this all out am wanting it again, so I am now going to eat!

Stay Calm and Keep Gardening.

Sharing this post with Rooted In Thyme
and with The Charm of Home