Kale and White Bean Salad

For today's lunch (challenge no. 20), I made a hearty and delicious salad with homemade caesar dressing. I found the recipe here.

SALAD INGREDIENTS:
1 small or 1/2 medium head dinosaur (lacinato) kale, sliced into thin ribbons
6 sundried tomatoes, sliced into narrow strips
1/2 cup white beans

DRESSING INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup cashews
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp salt
Juice of two lemons
Black pepper
3 pitted dates
1 tsp dulse flakes
3/4 cup water

INSTRUCTIONS:
Blend all of the dressing ingredients until smooth and creamy. Massage over the kale (I used three tablespoons of dressing for my portion). Add the beans and sundried tomatoes and toss.

Blackberry Wine

Challenge no. 9 is to make and bottle my own wine. After doing a lot of research on making my own wine at a winery vs. making my own wine at home, I've decided to go with the latter. Making your own wine at a winery STARTS in the thousands of dollars. It would probably be fantastic, but I can't take that expensive chance.

So, homemade wine. Since obtaining the type of grapes required to make a traditional wine would mean waiting until late summer and then having them delivered, I am going to attempt to make blackberry wine.

The ingredients are more readily available, and if I really wanted to, I could pick my own berries. This decision is partly influenced by some incredible blackberry wine I tasted at Applewood Orchards and Winery in the fall (it's available for purchase here if you're interested).

 
In terms of ingredients, it's simple: blackberries, sugar, water and yeast. The equipment will be the biggest purchase, but it seems that any brewing store will have exactly what I need.

I found instructions here, but this is one of the many set of instructions I found. There are books I could buy on the subject, but I'm going to just give this one a go and see what happens. If it's an epic fail, then I'll just try again. If it turns out delicious, I won't have to do any Christmas shopping this year.

Cheers!