Spring Birthday - Crudités

Today is my friend Colleen’s Birthday. She is a spectacular person, who in addition to being a rock star Mom and a PHD in Children’s Development, is one of the best friends a person could ask for. She spends her days raising up and celebrating the people around her. So on Saturday we got together to celebrate her!

This week, and the ones leading up to it, have been absolutely crazy, so I got a little help from our local Whole Foods for some of the spread, but given it was the spring I wanted to throw in something fresh and seasonal so I took a walk to the St Lawrence market, visit the farmers and see what I could get.

I left with a bag full of fresh veggies and herbs. So the decision was made - Crudité and Green Goddess dressing. Apt for celebrating the birthday girl!

I started with the Green Goddess. This is the easiest dressing to make since all you need to do is dump everything into a blender and let it go.

I started by putting half a cup of sour cream and half a cup of my homemade mayo into the blender. Then I added the zest of a lemon, two big cloves of garlic, and about a handful of each of Chives, Basil, Parsley, and Tarragon.

I added lemon juice (about 2 tbsps) until it started to reach the right consistency, you want it to be just thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Usually this dressing has anchovies in it, to give it some Umami. Since Colleen is a vegetarian I decided to swap out the anchovy for capers. They added a nice briny, salty note to the dressing and I lightened up on the lemon juice to compensate. Then I added a bit of salt to bring it all together.

Once that was done I just needed to prep the veggies. Let me tell you a secret… to serve the best veggies you’ve ever had. Blanche them.

Obviously some veggies are excluded from this, the carrots and cucumber I just sliced into even batons and left well enough alone - but the green veggies; asparagus, green beans, snap peas. Give them all a quick dip in rapidly boiling water then shock them in ice water. It brightens the green colour of everything and brightens the flavours of the veggies. Plus it makes it easier for your body to digest them!

Then I packed up everything and headed over to the party to enjoy everything complete with some champagne cocktails!