Good Eats

Happy Thursday! My sister-in-law is having a Thursday birthday today, so let's all wish her well. Happy Birthday!

Pleasant walk to Target, construction started on my ghost town, dinner with friends and lunches all set out for tomorrow. A nice day off.

So I was never much into salads. Until like, I don't know, maybe within the last year they've started to be okay. Now most days I'm usually making one and sometimes two. My go-to salad filler is romaine, because that's good, it seems more nutrient-filled than iceberg (which is what I grew up on), but not too bitter like some of the darker stuff. Crispy, too. For the three of us, per salad, I'm chopping up an entire romaine heart.

But then what? I started out cutting it with spinach, but my dad wasn't too big on that. Tried a fish salad this week, including cod flakes and steamed broccoli, cauliflower, and green summer squash. A lot of times with chopped nuts and dried things like blueberries and craisins and stuff. We've had a Greek-style salad at least once a week so far, with the tomatoes and cucumber and feta. The one today also had mushrooms and olives and celery, and was strikingly good. I think because it was a combination of vegetables (and fungus!) rather than a heap of lettuce with things in it.

Does anybody have some fun salad ideas? That use lettuce to its full potential or perhaps are some interesting vegetable combinations?

Oh here's one:

Have I told you about Russian potato salad? It's the best. Basically it's all these chopped things, but crazy things, like potato and carrot (boiled), cucumber AND pickle, boiled egg, um, ham. Onion? I like to add frozen peas, give it a nice pop. And it's got a mayonnaise based dressing like regular, and also dill? I forget the recipe I originally used, and there are so many versions out there. It's fun to just put whatever you want in it. I like it with a dash of mustard.

So I made that this week, what with the potato and the egg (I forgot to buy ham or even turkey :< ) and then all the vegetables it would be a full enough meal. Chopped some celery as small as the peas, for a nice crunch. But I wanted to do right by my family, and so instead of using a heap of mayo, I used a heap of garlic flavored hummus. !! Protein boost right there, as well. It worked out just fine, and my mom didn't even realize. That particular hummus had a strong...pickly? flavor to begin with, which I attribute to the garlic. They use garlic in pickle brine, don't they? So it was able to contribute that potato salad tang with, like, a third of the calories.

Also, I like to think that adding celery to anything automatically cuts a portion of the caloric content, being as you burn more calories digesting celery than you got from eating it. Fact.

Dinners have been pretty easy since I've been relying on the frozen Dream Dinners bags for the main course. Dream Dinners is this place where you go and package a bunch of fresh-cut ingredients into dishes they've set out ahead of time, and then you freeze 'em and use them when you want. At first I was all mlehhhhh about it, but now that I'm putting on a nightly show, their convenience cannot be overstated. I just provide the vegetables (mostly salad although today was also grilled summer squash), and maybe a grain product of some sort.

The other day I used their salmon fillets, and added a mushroom and spinach couscous as well as a bag salad. They make 'em with the dressing and stuff, and sometimes that's an easier alternative to chopping the romaine and trying to figure out what else needs to go in it. Gotta start using more of those steam-in-a-bag vegetables, too. Bought one for today but it was too small for all of us and it was delicious. Yellow carrots and navy beans and spinach. Gotta get more of that.

Don't get me wrong, it's not all salads and fish around here! This week we had spaghetti (omega3 grains) and jello and tomorrow they get roast beef sandwiches and chocolate-yogurt covered raisins.

And so do I. :>

-Steph