Wheat Berry Citrus Salad

So there's been a little laps in posts lately because, I'm perhaps a bit overly sad to say, my trusty computer has processed its last photo, surfed it's last site, posted its last post. My poor little mac, with the missing "1" key from when the dog jumped up onto my lap and ripped it off with her paw. With the dents and the scuffs and the always-dusty screen. The scratches that the photographer from this interview asked me to try to clean off before he realized that they weren't going anywhere.

We studied for orals together. I started my blog on that computer. It always knew what I was thinking, I barely had to type in a web address before it knew just where to take me. It had even stopped spell-checking some of those obscure 17th century French words I'm typing into my dissertation notes all the time. I mean, sure it was slow. I may have had to turn it on and just walk away for a few minutes while it kind of stretched and yawned itself to life. And downloading pictures may have taken the better part of a commercial break. And everything had to be backed up constantly, or moved 'off site' because of a lack of memory. But these defects creep up slow, you know? And now it's dead.

And I tell you what. I was damn lucky to be able to get back on Flickr at all, since that old computer remembered user names and passwords I can't certainly can't. It only took about 2 hours of freaking out and desperately typing and retyping combinations of possible user names and passwords, followed by an impassioned email to Yahoo begging for a hint.

So anyway, I'm trying to eat healthier, what with bathing suit season coming up and all. Actually, because of a bachelorette party next weekend in North Carolina, I'm staring down the barrel of bathing suit season much, much too early. Whoa boy, I am not ready for that. So wheat berries. Because they're filling and chewy and really quite satisfying. The recipe called for a bunch of watercress, which you can use if you have it. All I could find was arugula, so that's what I did, and I'd do it again, just the same. I also marinated the red onion (which I used in place of shallot because I needed to use it up) in the citrus juices in order to mellow the flavor. It's a great trick that I learned from Nigela, and now I hardly ever use raw onion in a salad that hasn't had a good soak in some citrus first. I really liked this one. Finished the whole thing myself over the course of a couple of days.

Wheat Berry Citrus Salad
Adapted from Catherine Walthers's Raising the Salad Bar

For the Salad:

1 cup what berries, rinsed
1 bunch arugula, washed and dried
1 large carrot, peeled and julienned
1/2 cup dried cranberries
Grated zest of 1 orange (use a blood orange if you can get it)
Grated zest of 1 lime

Put the wheat berries into a large pot and fill with water so that the water covers the berries by several inches. Bring the water to a boil. Partially cover the pot, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for about 75-90 minutes, until the wheat berries art tender. They will remain chewy, however. Keep an eye on the water level, and refill if it gets too low. I added more water a couple of time. Drain the berries, and set aside to cool.

Add the rest of the salad ingredients to the wheat berries.

For the dressing:

Juice of 1 orange
Juice of 1 lime (like how that works out?)
1/2 small red onion, minced (you can lose less depending on how much you like onion)
2 teaspoons maple syrup
3 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

This is a little trick I learned from Nigela: Marinate the onion in the citrus juices for about 20 minutes while the wheat berries are cooking. This will help mellow its flavor, since the onion is raw. Then whisk together all of the ingredients for the dressing and toss with the wheat berry mixture just before serving. If you want to save some of the salad for later, toss individual portions with the dressing and store the salad separately.