This salad is like an edible mango margarita. It’s sweet, zesty and with the addition of a little salt, it’s downright tangy! The good news is that it won’t get you in a lot of trouble like a margarita can. OOOOH tequila…there’s a reason why I call you ta-kill-ya!
Let’s take a moment to talk about fruit salads. People always ask you to bring one when they invite you over. You have to put at least 4 fruits in to make it a legit fruit salad….OR you could just cut up two fruits (in this case mango & apple), put sugared lime zest on top and call it a day! That sugared lime zest earns your EXTRA bonus points. It’s like two extra fruits or something.
This means your fruit salad task was ridiculously simple and people are utterly impressed.
What would happen if you drank a margarita while eating this salad? Brain explosion from awesomeness?
I think it would be an excellent ending to a Shrimp Taco Night.
Discuss.
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Let’s start the week with a simple recipe. Mondays are hard!
Say hello to my favorite standby, my big fat simple GREEK SALAD. It may not be the most authentic Greek salad but is sure is good. When I’m grocery shopping, I almost always make sure to have these salad ingredients so I can easily whip it up on a week night. It’s a no brainer and it’s healthy. I love that in a salad.
I’m also kind of addicted to it. I think it’s the sumac. Do you know about sumac? It’s a Middle Eastern spice that adds a lemony tang to salads & meat. It MAKES this salad one of my favorite salads ever. It’s absolutely delicious.
If you feel like you need to add a lil somethin’ somethin’ to the salad, you could top it with grilled shrimp, sausage, chicken or steak. Marinated artichoke hearts or sun-dried tomatoes are a good additions too but don’t forget to serve it with some grilled PITA. Pita in all caps. CARBS deserve capital letters. I shouldn’t have to explain that to you.
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When you’re deep in an organizing project and you look around the room you just destroyed, it’s best to just STOP. Before you get thoroughly overwhelmed, take a breather and make something good to eat. Don’t examine your stuff!
Just LEAVE.
The act of taking a break and chopping up vegetables, grilling steak outdoors and composing a bunch of colors on a plate will not only give you a nice break from the chaos in the other room, it will give you fuel to power through.
Don’t think of the pile of papers you need to shred. Don’t agonize over how much stuff you’ve accumulated in the past few years. Just eat this delicious salad. It’s spicy, hearty and kinda light!
We spent so much of this weekend going through our unwanted items. Lucky for us, this bright/colorful salad was the light at the end of the tunnel.
Now excuse me while I get back to work sorting all the stuff I need to shred.
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If you’ve had a crazy EAT WEEK and you’re looking for a good reset button, try this salad.
It’s my RESET BUTTON.
Crispy apples are mixed with creamy avocado, the crunch of sunflower seeds and peppery arugula in a tangy honey mustard dressing.
Your taste buds are back on track…craving good things…until you make Breakfast Cookies…
Now you need a new RESET button…
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A few weeks ago I went out to eat at restaurant near work and had the most AH-mazing kale slaw. It was a special and will probably not to be on the menu again (at least that’s what the waiter said). How am I to resist a special kale slaw? It’s my kryptonite! My coworker and I ordered the slaw and on the first bite she realized it had garlic in it (she’s allergic to garlic!).
When the waiter came back, she asked for a different salad and just when he tried to take her plate away, I called dibs on her slaw. Yeah, I totally did that. The waiter gave me a weird look, but after a few bites of my own slaw I realized that there was no way in HECK I’d let any bit of that slaw go to waste.
Nope!
Not gonna happen.
My coworker got another salad while I ate my slaw and half of hers. I would have totally eaten her whole plate if the waiter didn’t give me the stink eye. Maybe he called dibs on the salad? I heard nothing. I was too busy figuring out what was in the slaw so I could recreate it at home.
My rendition here is pretty close. There’s a little less oil and I didn’t put the grated Pecorino cheese (weird, right?) in the slaw because I wanted to keep it vegan. What I came up with is an Asian inspired slaw that will have you eating off other people’s plates. There’s just something about that mint with the crunchy cabbage & kale in that tangy sweet sesame dressing. Straight up addictive, I say!
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You guys! I’m going through some SERIOUS Oprah withdrawals. It’s really bad. Last week I had a crazy dream where I was trying to find a pair of sunglasses and all of a sudden I was in Walmart and Oprah (who was wearing FLIP FLOPS!) handed me a pair. I woke up before I could hear her sweet voice. Sigh. THEN yesterday while I was driving to work, I pulled up at a stop light and a shiny black suburban passed by. OMG it was Oprah driving the car. Well…not really. It was a woman that looked just like her.
While figuring out what to type in this paragraph, I did a google search for “Oprah Vegan” because I remembered the show where she went vegan for a week with all of her staffers and LOOK! that post was a year ago! WHAT WHAT?! I think this means we’re destined to meet. Or if not, maybe someone who knows her really well could get her drunk on Moscow Mules and have her call my voicemail? All I want her to say is TRACY SHUTTERBEAN in her voice. It would seriously make my decade.
I wonder if Oprah would like this salad? I’m pretty sure she would. Besides the base of romaine lettuce, there’s a bit of brown rice, avocado chunks, cucumber, nori shreds, edamame, carrots & sesame seeds. It’s hearty yet light! I bet she’d ask for more green onion miso dressing. Of course she’d ask for more dressing! That dressing IS SO DANG GOOD.
Without further adieu…
SUSHI ROLL EDAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME SAAAAAAAALAD FOR EVERYONE!
Did I tell you that Cooper can do the Oprah voice now? It’s glorious.
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I’ve spent the past 48 hours feeling like I’ve been rocking back and forth (spending 7 days on a cruise ship can do that to you!). Everything right now is a bit off kilter because in the past week, time zones were crossed, climates changed, calendar days were disregarded, and I did something I never thought was possible- I spent a whole week without using my cellphone (OMG!). Instead of tackling the laundry, emptying suitcases and sorting through the mail when we got home Monday, I immediately went grocery shopping to get provisions for the week. I figured the only way to feel like normal again at home was to get back to work in my kitchen and binge on kale.
When I was eating lifeless romaine salad with extremely unripe yet mushy tomatoes on the boat (not all the food was dreadful!), I daydreamed of crispy kale salads with toasted coconut. Spending a week without kale was absolute torture and when I was standing in my kitchen swaying from side to side chopping kale, I vowed never to let that many days go by without my leafy green security blanket.
The crispy crunchy kale & cabbage shreds tasted amazing with the roasted cashew pieces and hemp seeds. The apple added a nice sweetness too! What you have here is a gigantic plate of HEALTH! I think the slaw could have potentially erased all of those chocolate dipped mickey mouse ice cream bars I ate. Who am I kidding? What I actually need is some serious Mousercise. For reals.
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While everyone was reheating their leftover Thanksgiving dinner Friday night, I rushed out to the grocery store (which was nice & empty BTW) to fill up my cart up with vegetables to juice and kale to inhale. It seems that last week I ate like my life depended on it; it’s the holidays!
Saturday morning I woke up and juiced, went for a walk, cleaned house, worked in the kitchen, decorated our house for Christmas, drank water like a fish, juiced again and made this amazing kale salad for dinner.
One of the reasons I picked this recipe from the Super Natural Every Day Cookbook was that it looked extremely healthy, yet filling. I also thought it would help get my taste buds in check since they were accepting nothing but pumpkin pie and my mom’s stuffing for 24 hours straight. I found myself scarfing down the salad, but it wasn’t because I was super hungry. The toasted coconut and the crispy kale coated in olive oil, sesame oil and shoyu created a buttery/salty/ crunchy effect that I like to call instant crack! It’s a delightful thing when “health food” becomes addictive, isn’t it?
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Whenever I see a fennel bulb, memories flood into my head of my dad picking wild fennel on the side our driveway. I remember him taking a bite and offering me some. I also remember being puzzled as to why my dad loved the taste of fennel; my uneducated palette just didn’t get it. When I set a plate of this Arugula Fig & Fennel salad in front of my dad on Cooper’s birthday, with beaming eyes he told me how much his father loved figs and how they’d pick them off the trees during this time of year when he was a boy. I could tell the salad triggered a fond memory for his father in the same way fennel triggers my memories of him.
This is what I love the most about feeding others. It’s always a pleasure hearing other people’s stories and connections with food. It’s particularly exciting when food helps brings back memories from my parent’s childhood because I am always so eager to learn more about them.
Peppery arugula and crunchy fennel slices are spiked with a simply lemon dressing and finished off with beautiful quarters of sweet juicy figs and shavings of fresh Parmesan. It’s a perfectly pretty and well balanced salad. Hurry up! Fig season is almost over!
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