fftf: I'm back! with my daughter's first salad 🥰

It's me! HIIII!! Hello beautiful, beloved subscribers!!!

I've been thinking casually about my newsletter comeback for the past ~3 months, but hadn’t had a food inspiration pull at me hard enough to get my fingers to the keyboard until this week, so here I am, woohoo!

It feels good to write this after so long. I'm still the same me... always thinking about my next meal, except now I have a cute little sidekick (slash hindrance) in my daily quest for deliciousness 😉. I guess I should briefly introduce the (very good) reason I haven't been writing for the past many months... my sweet daughter, Jazmine, who is pretty much a dream 😍. (If you're on IG, you may have seen my Instagram update when she was born last August. Here's us a few weeks ago on our first mother-daughter trip :)

The momentous occasion for this first post is… drumroll please... this week I made little Jazzy her first salad 😭😭😭. One of my personal rules for feeding Jazzy is that I don't feed her anything I wouldn't eat myself. So - put another way: I made a salad for & inspired by my daughter, and it turned out delicious enough to also be worth sharing with you all!

My baby’s first salad! 🙌🏼 And actually, the first recipe I'm publishing for which she was my muse! If you know me / have been reading my newsletter for a while, then you’ll know that this would be a very special moment 😁. My sweet girl turned 9 months old last week and I’m pretty freaking proud of the amazing little eater she is so far. I’ll get into that another time; for today I want to tell you about the fun backstory of this salad, as it alludes to the other new & interesting part of my foodie life: settling into a new food scene here in my new home of Pittsburgh, PA.

Before I get to that, though, I should appease your raised eyebrows right now because you’re probably thinking… your 9-month-old is eating salad?!?!?! Well, yes and no. This is not a lettuce salad. Although… I did casually let her munch on some farmers market lettuce this week and she was really into it. Had to take it away because a lot of gagging ensued, but the photo is pretty cute....

Before the scatteredness of my #mombrain drives you away (sorry! so much to say! excited to write! gotta get this done before naptime, lol, the day? ends!), let's get to the inspiration behind Jazzy's First Salad...

On a chilly New Years Day, 2023, my husband and I decided to go out for dinner. It was his first time and my second at our now-favorite restaurant in Pittsburgh, a place called Apteka.

A perfect 30-minute walk from our house, this restaurant is truly unique. There are no reservations; it’s only open for dinner Friday through Sunday. Totally unpretentious and understated yet exceedingly hip, after your table has been confirmed by the seasoned staff manning the always-a-line outside, when you enter, you place your order immediately at the bar before sitting down. Ordering at the stand is delightful - as you ask about the dishes of the day and discuss the (natural) wine menu, they’ll pour you a taste as soon as you express interest in something… a fun perk of small-town charm, they often let me taste multiple wines till I find a favorite!

The food comes out FAST after you sit down. (They open the doors at 5pm and, that one time we were first in line, we had food at our table at 5:11pm!!!) The servers are kind, knowledgeable, and sartorially edgy.

Wow, I haven’t even gotten to the food yet… everything (I mean everything) is made in house, including lots of fermented goodies. The life-partners/co-owners/chefs post about what they forage during the week to put on the menu that weekend (!). You often don’t know what you’re tasting, you just know it’s freaking delicious veggie-forward food, made from super fresh ingredients, and uber-creative. Oh, and did I mention it’s vegan, Eastern European cuisine?????!!!!!!

Being omnivores, this is NOT what I’d expect to be our favorite restaurant, but… it is!! I love it for the so-much-going-on-yet-always-craveable salads (hands down the best in town), focus on local ingredients, natural wine, great servers and casual but hip vibe. My husband loves that it’s unpretentious yet delicious.

So, on New Years Day evening, it was cold, but still warm enough to sit outside under Apteka’s vibey backyard tent with heaters... (It's a circus-like tent that still manages to be cool. Jazzy and I dig it, per this actual photo from that night!)

We ordered what we later realized is Apteka's signature dish (and featured in the NYTimes this year!) - celeriac schnitzel served with a trio of slaws, listed on the menu as: “leek&apple slaw, pole slaw, beets, and horseradish sauce." The schnitzel was good, but these slaws were OUTSTANDING. With one better than the next, I was pretty impressed... a side slaw could be this standout?!

Here's a photo of the dish, swiped from Apteka's Instagram and via the NYTimes:

At this particular moment in time of January 2023, Jazzy was just shy of 5 months old, and I was feeling VERY excited to start giving her tiny tastes of everything I was eating that might be baby-appropriate. I hadn't thought about feeding her anything from a restaurant that night, but I suddenly remembered reading somewhere that grated raw apples/crunchy veggies are safe for babies. And because I could just tell that Apteka is sourcing stellar veg, I decided to give Jazzy some little tastes of the slaws. I was surprised that she really seemed to like them! Her first restaurant-made food :).

Welp... that was January 1 when we ate "the slaws," and it took me until this week of May to actually make her a grated salad inspired by them 🤣. But, hey, I finally did it, it turned out delicious, and now I'm sharing it with you!

Here's a photo of Jazzy's First Salad and the (very flexible, please improvise!) recipe below. I hope you enjoy! Until next time!

love,
Jess

^*No, I absolutely do not garnish her food... I just did it to take a photo for this email :).
^*Also no, she does not eat out of my nice ceramic plates like this; again - just for the photo. I fed her some with a spoon out of this, but mostly ate it myself.
*I'll likely post an actual video of her eating it on my IG, so check there if you want to see the real life mess, and see for yourself if you think she likes it!

Jazzy's First Salad - A Beet, Apple, Kohlrabi Slaw, inspired by Apteka
Took 35 minutes, made about 1 medium-large bowl of salad that took us about a week to eat, requires a grater

Ingredients:

3 small beets
1 small apple
another crunchy veggie - I used kohlrabi but a few carrots, radishes, or turnip would likely work well!
1 lemon
ground coriander (if you don't have it or don't like it, fine to leave this out)
apple cider vinegar
olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
optional additions: fresh dill or other herbs, spinach
serve with: yogurt or cottage cheese

Instructions:

Wash the beets thoroughly and scrub with a veggie brush if you wish. Trim the stringy root part and trim any parts of the skin that look gnarly or super thick. Otherwise, I don't peel my beets! Don't trim the top part of the beet stem, as it's handy to hold on to it while you grate.
Wash/scrub/trim the other veggies + apple as needed. I did not peel my apple before grating, but found that the skin would sometimes get bunched up into one big piece and not grate properly, so I pulled out (and ate) those parts and did not put them in the salad. You can peel the apple to avoid this if you wish.
Using a grater with large holes, grate the beets, apple, and other veggies into a medium bowl. Alternately, you could trim everything and grate it using a food processor. (I may try this next time and make a bigger batch for the whole family.)
If using, finely chop your herbs and any greens you'd like to add. (If serving this to a baby, you'll need to chop the greens and any stems extra fine.)
Add a few hearty shakes of ground coriander. Squeeze half the lemon overtop and add a dash/teaspoon or two of apple cider vinegar. Add a few hearty glugs of olive oil, a good sprinkle of salt and a little pepper if you wish. Toss together, then be sure to taste and adjust these seasonings until it's delicious!
This keeps well in the fridge for at least 5 days. I like to serve it with a dollop of yogurt or cottage cheese mixed in, but also great without!

Hi, I'm Jess! I help health-conscious, busy people transform their cooking from chore to lifestyle through intuitive cooking, which I teach through online classes, free content, coaching and more. This is my newsletter, Food for Thought Fridays, where I share highly actionable tips and inspiration to help you cook more intuitively (which makes cooking feel easier and SO much more fun!). Sometimes the text above may include affiliate links, meaning (at no additional cost to you) I get a commission if you click through and make a purchase. This helps me to continue to share free content, so I would love it if you buy through my link! Thank you for supporting Garlic Press Jess!