Happy Friday!! I am so glad it’s the weekend. Though there isn’t much exciting going on, it’s nice to have Matt home, get a long run in, and relax a little bit. It also gives me a little more time to cook or bake. Luckily for me (and everyone else around me), I haven’t had any SUPER crazy cravings or ridiculous aversions…yet. I just prefer to eat only cold foods or breakfast foods, that’s not weird, right? So last night, when I was looking through the fridge and trying to figure out what I wanted to cook for Matt for dinner, I saw a ton of veggies.

I remembered I had seen a recipe for a cold asparagus salad on Food Network a few months back, and I decided to give it a go.

Recipe adapted from Food Network’s Chilled Asparagus Salad

Ingredients

(Serves 4 as a side dish!)

1 lb of fresh asparagus, washed

heavily salted water for boiling

6-8 oz diced pancetta

2 TBS white sugar

2 TBS lemon juice

1 1/2 TBS dijon mustard

4 TBS olive oil

2 TBS apple cider vinegar

Directions

• Once your pancetta is diced, fry it up in a large skillet or pan, drain it, and set it aside. I saved the grease for Bear’s food…it makes his coat prettier

• Begin to boil a large pot of salted water. Wash your stalks of asparagus and trim the ends off…about an inch or so. Prepare an ice bath in the sink for your asparagus.

• Once the pot is at a rolling boil (I always get incredibly impatient when waiting for this!) Add the 2 TBS of sugar to the water. Prior to looking at this recipe, I had never heard of adding sugar to boiling water prior to blanching, and to be honest, I can’t tell you if it made a huge difference or not.  Add the asparagus, and boil for about 8-9 minutes.
• Remove the asparagus from the boiling water and place in an ice bath to shock it.

• While that is in the cold water, mix up the dressing. Add the olive oil, apple cider vinegar, dijon mustard, and lemon juice. Whisk well, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

• Remove the asparagus from the ice bath and cut into 1/2 in pieces.

• DRY. DRY. DRY. Make sure your asparagus is DRY before adding the dressing to it.  
• Add the dressing to the asparagus, toss well, and top with pancetta.