Show Us LOCAL: California Autumn Salad

I'm taking advantage of another 'Daily Prompt' for NaBlogPoMo Post #14. This one, Non-Regional Diction, says: Write about whatever you'd like, but write using regional slang, your dialect, or in your accent. Photographers, artists, poets: show us LOCAL.

Okay, dude, this is like a gnarly autumn salad made with radical produce from one of our bitchin' LOCAL farmers' markets.
It's all organic, bro, and totally epic. Just sayin'.

That was lame! I don't talk like that or hang with anyone who does ;-)

This salad was inspired by two autumn salads I've seen in the past week. The first is a Cranberry Orange Quinoa Salad from Family Spice. I think Foodgawker promoted it one morning on my Facebook newsfeed. The second is Saveur's Fall Salad with Roasted Butternut Squash, Kale Chips, and Pomegranate Seeds. I made my own salad with bits and pieces from each recipe and used produce from one of our local farmers' markets. It was rad.

Basically, I roasted thin slices of butternut squash from a peeled and seeded 1.5 pound squash. I bought about 6 ounces of baby kale and made kale chips out of half (I don't think this adds much to the dish - I would just toss all the raw kale with the warm quinoa next time). I cooked 1 cup of quinoa (1/2 cup white and 1/2 cup red quinoa). I tossed the warm quinoa with raw baby kale. For the dressing, I used orange juice, maple syrup, Dijon mustard and a drizzle of olive oil. After adding the dressing, and some salt and pepper to taste, I folded in a handful of pomegranate seeds, scattering of toasted pumpkin seeds, orange supremes from 3 small oranges, and the roasted butternut squash. I garnished the top of the salad with the kale chips.

The colors are gorgeous and it really does utilize the best of the autumn harvest, even if it was about 85 degrees in Coronado today!

Just in case I didn't cover LOCAL with my Southern California slang and California produce, here's a photo of a local Coronado fisherman walking on the beach, in November...take note of the cigar sticking out of his mouth at 7-something a.m.