Lilac Window

Some random but possibly interesting facts about salad around here:

• not enough salad is consumed in this family.
• This may be due to the fact that lettuce just goes bad too quickly. Also, I usually make too much salad as a side dish, and then it goes bad, and I feel wasteful. But I have discovered, that I just need one head of Romaine Lettuce, and a ton of other vegges, and we can have salad all week. Just one or two lettuce leaves is enough when I put everything else on.
• I have a sudden aversion to buying meat. We may become weekend carnivores, and weekday vegetarians. We may not ready to be full vegetarian, but a couple steps closer.
• That said, we do like the bacon. Its even better with salad.
• I justify the bacon consumption with kale. We LOVE kale and bacon. (Pancetta would be so much more gourmet – but I’m not fooling anyone. We eat bacon, and I’m admitting it here.)
• Trying four recipes from Smitten Kitchen this week.
• Finding that children will try things they don’t usually like if the presentation is adjusted. This salad for instance. Inspired by this Cobb salad, I put ours out on a platter. It went over well.
• In order to remain satiated on this week of salads we include more filling ingredients such as bread, nuts, eggs, left-overs, lentils, rice…
• When making a salad I ofter just fry a few strips of bacon first. Then use that oil to toast seeds/nuts, croutons, left-overs, lentils, kale, anythings else that I want to put on. (fattening? yes. but, the argument is that these are to be little toppings, not the entire salad. And hey! its salad for dinner! and this way the kids eat it. Its win-win.)
• I love warm salad toppings. Hence my previous note. One a bed of crispy romaine and baby spinach, warm toasted anything is good. (especially with dressing)
• We try to have nuts and seeds around the house. Especially pine nuts.
• This week’s salad treats are pecans, and Swiss cheese. If I’m not buying meat, I can justify that too!
• boiled egg – a good thing to have around the house too.
• my favorite dressing: Olive oil, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, maple syrup, salt, garlic, lemon juice, flax seeds.  – quantities to taste. And sometimes I add other things, like ginger, paprika, other spices… you know, I like to have fun.
• My favorite thing about the farmer’s market is the big bags of fresh herbs for $3.00. They seem to last longer than the store bought ones, and I feel like I can be really generous with them, use them for greens in the salad for instance.
• Jamie Oliver has a warm salad with roasted carrots and avocado that nearly kills me its so amazing. I will make it this week. He often puts hunks of toasted ciabatta bread in his salad. This makes a salad a meal, and is the best idea ever because the bread soaks up the dressing, and fills you up, and takes the whole “salad for dinner” concept to a new level.
• Oh gosh. Today’s lunch salad just blew me over it was so good.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 14th, 2010 at 1:32 pm and is filed under FOOD. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.