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There are a lot of things I want to do in my life. One of them is to have a garden where I can just pick off random herbs, fruits, and veggies and become completely inspired to make new creations by the plants growing in my backyard. Tough luck for that now, though, since I’m here in California wondering if my green onions and cilantro have shriveled up from the blazing sun and lack of shade in our yard!

Earlier last week, my MIL had my parents over to her house and we all had dinner together. She and my mom both have such a green thumb – gone are the days where I used to balk at pulling weeds (hey, as a kid, helping with the gardening is the last thing you want to do, but now I realize my parents were trying to instill a love for nature within me).  Now I’m actually inspired to grow something for myself.  Growing up, I would pick off guavas, lychees, nectarines, plums, pomegranates, and persimmons from my mom’s garden – the fruit always tasted better than from the store, and were more abundant in vitamins, phytochemicals, and antioxidants than getting an apple that’s lasted a few days or weeks in transit at the grocery store.

After taking a walk with my mom-in-law in her garden to find the things I could pick off to make a salad, I realized that growing your own produce lends itself into limitless possibilities. And if you think flowers are off-limits (actually, broccoli and cauliflower are considered flowers of their respective plants), you can actually eat some types such as pansies, honeysuckle (not the berries!), and roses.

I filled up a basket full of pansies, which have a sweet, honey-like crunch at the top of the stem towards the flower, mild-tasting petals, and a slight wasabi-like bite in the stem. Also in the basket were bunches of arugula (also known as rocket lettuce), Boston bibb lettuce, cilantro, green onions, celery leaves, a pomelo my mom-in-law had already picked (called buoi in Vietnamese; looks like a large yellow grapefruit with thick rind and sweeter fruit inside), and a couple of limes thrown in for good measure.

Then I started thinking about making a salad composed of veggies entirely from mom-in-law’s garden.  One-half cup of arugula is only worth 2 calories, and full of vitamins A and C (if you eat two cups of it, you’d have conquered eating about 40% of your daily needs for vitamin A!).  After picking out a couple limes from her tree, I thought to make a pomelo and cilantro-lime vinaigrette from my pickings.

The pomelo has a grapefruitlike taste but is sweeter and less sour – if you can’t find it, use oroblanco or some grapefruit juice mixed in with some water instead.  This salad dressing is so tasty and out of the ordinary – I really like the flavor of pomelo in it because it adds that bit of sweetness without being too overpowering.  One cup of pomelo sections will give you more than your daily recommendation of vitamin C (115 mg worth!) and almost 2 grams of dietary fiber.  Not too bad since after all these events we’ve been attending lately, I’m feeling under the weather and could use some nutrition pick-me-up!

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Pomelo and cilantro-lime vinaigrette

makes about 1/2 cup

1/2 cup cilantro, chiffonade

Juice of 1 lime

Juice of about 1/2 cup pomelo segments (about 4-5 segments; use oroblanco or grapefruit instead if you can’t find pomelo)

1/4 tsp sugar

Salt and freshly cracked pepper, to taste

about 4 tsp olive oil

1.  Combine all ingredients into a medium bowl, except for olive oil.  Whisk in the olive oil into the salad dressing; adjust seasoning to taste.

To assemble salad: Combine your fave veggies and toss with the salad dressing.  For our lunch, I combined some arugula, Boston bibb lettuce, celery leaves, pansies, baby green onions, and pomelo segments.