My New Favorite Salad(s)

I love finding new salad recipes. Salads have forever been Geoff's nemesis, mostly because he spent his life having to eat (his words) "gross" ones. In my imagination that means sad iceberg lettuce, mealy tomatoes and horrible/boring dressing. Blech.

We've made quite a revolution to our diets in the last year. An even more drastic one in the last 6 months, where we are trying to eat as vegetarian/vegan/raw as possible. Not always and not in a militant way. We still have the occasional steak or burger, or some chips and salsa (my one true weakness), but we're doing as much organic, whole foods, whole grains, vegetables, superfoods as we possibly can. (Real Simple did a whole feature on the healthiest foods last month. I was glad to see I was on the right track and that about 2/3 of the things on the list were already in rotation at our house.) The biggest difference I've noticed so far is how it makes me feel. I rarely need coffee in the afternoons anymore or feel tired during the day. And more specifically, I've also noticed how horrible I feel if I don't eat that way now. For example, my stupid boss bought some sort of Crackle Crunch Caramel Corn nonsense from Dean & DeLuca today for a "treat" for the office. Lovely of him. And, yes, I told him to his face he was the devil. I of course tasted it, and that led to several other subsequent "tastings" throughout the afternoon and now I feel sluggish and horrible and like I just ate seven Big Macs.

Diet revolution aside, I also have an ever-growing desire to cook, bake and experiment in the kitchen. Cooking for me, has grown into a kind of therapy. If I have a bad day, all I want to do is get in the kitchen and make something. I'm still a total disaster about it and won't be Martha Stewart anytime soon. Geoff marvels at how many dishes I can create in the process of making just one meal. But I love to do it. It's all I want to do in my (limited) free time. And it's not about eating the final product (though that is fun too) - it's about the actual cooking process.

So the diet revolution in combination with cooking therapy, means that I am constantly on the look out for interesting things to make. Salads included.


My first new favorite I found on 101cookbooks.com, my new favorite food website. OK, clearly I like this site because she's on the same page about eating whole foods, all of her recipes are vegetarian, and she's into travel and photography. We're basically the same person except that she lives on the West Coast and is blond and skinny. But the recipes are/look amazing. Technically this salad is the only one I've tried so far, but if I use this to judge the rest, I'll love all of them.


Her Raw Tuscan Kale Salad is so simple and it actually makes raw kale fairly easy to eat. It's just raw kale with a special dressing, topped with pecorino cheese and whole wheat breadcrumbs (you can easily make your own breadcrumbs by toasting some really chunky whole grain bread and then throwing them in the food processor for a minute or so). I think the lemon juice in the dressing (lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, S&P, red pepper flakes and pecorino cheese) helps wilt the kale down a bit to make it more chewable and less like eating a tree. I also used just whatever kale they had at the grocery store and it worked, even if it wasn't Tuscan. And don't accuse me of liking this only because there is so much cheese involved. (Although I don't blame you for thinking it). I was so excited to eat it that I forgot to take a picture of the final product before I dug right in. But, um.... this is what it looked like when I finished...?


New Favorite Salad #2 I created for myself at Dean and DeLuca's salad bar last week for lunch and recreated it for dinner for myself last night.


Mixed greens, sliced radishes, artichokes, tomatoes, blanched haricot vert with slivered almonds tossed with Balsamic Vinegar, EVOO and freshly ground S&P. I've had it for lunch several days in a row. One day they were out of tomatoes and I tried it with diced red pepper instead. Also very good. So far Dean and DeLuca does it slightly better than me (which I am chalking up to needing to upgrade my balsamic and trying a different brand of artichokes next time). Both of these I tried on myself first as a guinea pig. We'll see what Geoff thinks of them. I'm making the Raw Tuscan Kale one for a dinner party tomorrow night and he'll be trying it there.

Hope someone else is as excited about these salads as I am.