Dandelion Salad, Cherimoya, & Pictures from the beach!

For lunch today I had another dandelion greens salad, with half of my baked yam. Yummy yammy! That yam is SOOOO good. Sweet and creamy and good! The salad was also good. Dandy greens aren't probably my new favorite, but I like them. Today I added a bunch of avocado to my salad, and it was superb.


Tonight for dinner I had the other half of my yam, the rest of my jacinto kale, and some leftover stuffed collards (which I had tucked away in the freezer). In the end, I could only eat one of those little collard packets. The yam is quite filling.


For dessert I ate half of my white cherimoya! I haven't ever had one before, and it was pretty good. When I bought it at the farmer's market, there was a really sweet girl there who told me all about how to eat them and how to know when it's ripe... So, this is it before I cut it open. See how it is splitting open at the end? That was one of the ways that I knew it was ripe.

And this is it cut open. It's got biggish seeds inside, and you just eat it up, suck the fruit off the seeds, and then spit the seeds out. (I used a spoon) The flavor is very nice. The girl at the farmer's market said "they taste like vanilla," and I can see what she means. This one was a little bit gritty... I don't know if that's just the way they are, but I got the feeling it should be creamier. Maybe the second half will ripen a bit more.

Interestingly, this is how many seeds were in just one half of my white cherimoya! Sorry for the blurry picture... it was the best my little camera could do, for some reason.


And now, avert your eyes if you're only here for the food pictures! It's been super low tide this week when I've been taking the doggies to the beach, and today I finally remembered to bring my camera. There are lots of tide pools, and thousands of beautiful and amazing little sea critters: seagulls, pelicans, sandpipers, snowy plovers, egrets, sea anenomes, sea urchins, hermit crabs, little crabs, BIG crabs, sea stars... it's all so beautiful.

Sea anenomes are so beautiful and amazing. There are lots of different types (species?), but I love these ones with the bright, almost-neon colors. When you touch their soft, sticky little feelers they try to grab your finger and contract the feelers in toward the center, which is their mouth. You can't really tell, but this one is under water. Above water, they close up and wait for the tide to come back in.

This is a close-up of the texture from a giant sea star. So neat!

I love the pretty texture of all the mussels crowding together on the rocks.



Here is the overall scene, usually this beach is all underwater and it is not a place where we can walk... so it always feels special to come here during super low-tide times.

And lastly, here are my two canine cuties: Stevie Wonder & Dottie Bonkers... very happy indeed!