Recipe 81. Wow. This is the last recipe I will be posting from this cookbook. Like I mentioned when I first started this challenge, I did skip certain recipes like the alcoholic beverages and a few other things for various reasons. But for the 81 recipes completed, I have to say that this was an amazing cookbook.

I’m honestly not sure whether I liked this cookbook more or the Yum & Yummer book that I cooked through before (Yum & Yummer posts). These were great 2 cookbooks that taught me so much and opened my mind in the kitchen. The food was always so fresh and flavourful and I will keep these books handy to re-make my favourites. Just like I did when I finished Yum & Yummer, I will make a separate post about my faves and other comments.

Before I can get to that, I have to talk about this last recipe. If you’ve never had a rice salad, you need to try one. Because it’s a mix of rice and veggies, it’s much more filling and satisfying than a veggie-only salad. This recipe had lots of yummy ingredients and a nice lemony dressing to bring it all together.

I did make a few substitutions so I’m just going to list the changes with the original ingredients in (brackets) beside it. I used long grain brown rice (wild rice), mixed greens (arugula), and dried cranberries (raisins). I also omitted the goat cheese to make this salad dairy free and vegan. I know I changed 2 of the title components but I just used similar enough ingredients that I like and knew would still work in the recipe.

Even with all my little changes, this salad was delicious. The star was the roasted carrots. They are seasoned with cinnamon and chili powder which gives them a nice sweet and spicy taste. They would be a great side dish to any meal. The other flavourful component of this salad was the dressing. It was so lemony but well balanced with the dijon mustard and maple syrup. It was a simple dressing but very bright and fresh.

The dressing really soaked up nicely into the rice (and greens) and it was a great base for everything else. I love the little bits of crunch and chew that you get in every bite from the pepitas and cranberries. So good. I think the goat cheese would have been amazing here so I will not be skipping that next time.

I’m so happy I was able to end this cooking challenge with such a delicious recipe. It had everything you could want in a salad: awesome mix of textures (soft, crunchy), colours, and flavours (sweet, spicy, sour).