The Weekly Salad. . .or My Salad Days?

As I mentioned in my first post, I've been thinking about blogging for quite a while. After deciding that the topic of this blog would be the art of the salad, I immediately knew what to call it: "My Salad Days." According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, the term "salad days" is an idiomatic expression referring to one's youth or heyday. The expression originated in Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra. Why do I know this underused, somewhat obscure expression? Simple, my dad has a wide vocabulary and often includes in his speech underused, somewhat obscure expressions.

"My Salad Days" would be the perfect title for this blog. Certainly, no one else would think of this title for a blog! Boy, was I wrong. I tried several versions of the title: "My Salad Days," "The Salad Days," but they were all taken. Interestingly, all of the salad days blogs I visited seemed to be about youth or heydays. None of them were about salad.

I was ready to begin blogging, but I lacked a title. Thankfully my husband swooped in and suggested "The Weekly Salad." And guess what? It was available! Huzzah! For those less in the know than my political historian husband, "The Weekly Salad" is a play on The Weekly Standard, a weekly conservative magazine and blog. Let me be clear, I am in no way conservative and "The Weekly Salad" has nothing to do with politics.  (Really, can you imagine a conservative regularly eating salad as meals? Never! Meat and potatoes for the conservatives; salads are meant to be appetizers and side dishes.) The name just sounded right, and my goal with the blog is to post a new salad recipe each week. Get it? A weekly salad. In short, no politics here. With that, I give you a very liberal salad recipe. It involves leftover Mexican food, which clearly means we should open the borders.

Leftover Mexican-Polenta Salad

I hate wasting food, especially when leftovers can be combined into a delicious salad. In the fridge, I had a container of left over asiago-kale-broccoli polenta and black beans, shredded cheddar and salsa from a recent Mexican takeout order. (Have you ever been to New York's many Chinese-owned Mexican takeout restaurants? They are amazing and feel healthier than the standard Mexican takeout place.)

I combined about three-fourths of the polenta you see here with the black beans, cheddar, a few tablespoons of the salsa and half a head of chopped romaine. I planned to chop the polenta into cubes, but it was pretty crumbly. I just tossed it in with everything else and mixed. Voila!

Another re-purposed success!

Green and Orange

Two salads in one day! Okay, the first salad was from last week, but for someone new to blogging, I think two posts in a day is quite an achievement.  Tomorrow's lunch salad is brought to you by the colors green and orange.

I am a fairly habitual person, so it is no surprise that I tend to go through salad phases. Right now, I'm really enjoying cruciferous vegetables, like kale, cauliflower and broccoli. (It also helps that Costco sells really large bags of prewashed, precut broccoli.)

On weekends, I tend to pay less attention to what I eat, so on Mondays, I like to begin the week with lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. The Green and Orange Salad has both!

On Sunday nights, I pack lunch salad for both my husband and me, so the following yields two large salads.

• 4-6 stalks of kale
• An orange pepper
• A few handfuls of precut broccoli (I'm still new to measuring ingredients, but I estimate that I used 1-2 stalks worth of broccoli florets)
• 3 clementines, peeled and divided into sections.

Chop the kale and pepper and combine with the clementine pieces and broccoli florets.

I like to lightly dress my salads the night before when using cruciferous vegetables. I find this makes them more tender and flavorful. I do not like most bottled salad dressings (and when I do, they aren't very good for me), so I usually make my own or forgo dressing all together. When I do use dressing, vinegar is almost always the star ingredient. Instead of making the dressing on the side and pouring it onto the salad, I pour the dressing ingredients directly onto the salad and then toss everything together. This method saves two steps. Instead of a vegetable toss, a dressing mix and then a vegetable-dressing toss, I just throw everything in the bowl and toss once.

Here's what I used for the dressing:

• 1 and 1/4 tsp sugar
• A few shakes of garlic powder
• 4 Tbs rice vinegar.

I put two tablespoons of honey roasted peanuts in a small container on the side to mix into my salad tomorrow. This way, they won't get soggy. My husband doesn't like nuts, so he will add cheese to his salad in the morning. Personally, I don't think cheese goes with the salad, but to each their own.

Tada!

Summer Rolls Salad

Last weekend, my husband and I (okay, mostly me) made summer rolls for dinner. We used rice paper wrappers from our local Asian grocery store to wrap up a bunch of goodies. This batch of summer rolls included:

• Kale
• Sauteed tofu
• Snap peas
• Carrots
• Orange peppers
• Bean sprouts.

After slicing up the veggies and lightly sauteing the tofu (my husband's job), I moistened the rice paper wrappers for a minute or two in a dish of water (I used a Pyrex pie dish) until they become pliable. Then, I put in all of the ingredients and wrapped them up like burritos. We topped the summer rolls with homemade peanut sauce and sriracha.

Summer rolls taste amazing for dinner, but they don't make the best leftovers. Premade summer rolls get soggy and crunchy all at once the next day--the rice paper wrappers just don't refrigerate well. And, there is no way I would make them fresh at work. Can you imagine me at my desk dipping the wrappers into a dish of water!?

Instead, I re-purposed the leftover ingredients into a Summer Rolls Salad. 

The best part of making this salad is that I usually have enough left over veggies already washed and chopped from the summer rolls. All I had to do was take the veggies (kale, snap peas. carrots, orange peppers and bean sprouts), toss in some broccoli for volume and marinate them in a bit of rice wine vinegar over night so that the kale and broccoli would become more tender. I used the left over peanut sauce as dressing and tossed in a tablespoon or two of almonds. If you are wondering where the tofu went, we used all of it in the summer rolls!

Here's how to make the peanut sauce (also courtesy of my husband):

• 1/3 heaping cup peanut butter
• 1/3 cup room temperature water
• 3 Tbs soy sauce
• 2 Tbs hoisin sauce
• 1 Tbs sesame oil
• Sriracha to taste
• Garlic powder to taste

Mix all ingredients and then adjust to your taste--more water or soy sauce for a thinner sauce; more sriracha for a spicier sauce.

While this salad came about because I hate to waste leftovers, I will certainly be making it again even when summer rolls aren't for dinner the evening before!

Welcome!

This blog has been in formation for quite a while--I'll explain what I mean by that in just a minute--but I never thought I would really start it. My schedule changed recently, so I have some time on my hands--I'll explain that too--and I figure that I might as well jump right in.

I've always enjoyed writing. At first, I studied journalism, so there was plenty of writing in my life. Then, my job consisted of curricula and grant writing, so you guessed it, more writing. And when I switched jobs almost a year ago to one that required substantially less writing, I was still in graduate school with a 50-page thesis to go. I graduated in February, and now, I have a lot more time and a lot less writing to do. For the past two and a half years, my life was school-work-homework-wedding planning (during my first year of grad school). Now, I go to work, most of my writing takes place in email form and I have a lot more free time. I'm not particularly good at sitting around, so I thought that a blog might help my occupy some of that free time, get my culinary juices going and encourage me to do some creative writing.

If you are still reading, thank you! I've broken every rule of good writing, burying my lede, rambling a bit and still not getting to the point of the blog. It's my blog, and I'll ramble if I want to.

Now you know why of I have some time on my hands, but I haven't gotten to why I want to blog. As I mentioned a few paragraphs up, I studied journalism. In college, my dream career was to become a writer with my own column--to be a regular Carrie Bradshaw (except the whole writing about sex thing). For the majority of us who are not prolific/lucky/well-connected enough to have our own columns, blogging seems a natural fit. So there is the blogging dream. At one point in my career, I thought I about telling funny stories from my office. I'm glad that blog never came to fruition! Then, I got on the food blog bandwagon. At some point, I will post about my favorite food blogs, but I am addicted. A few months ago, I got an iPhone and that was it. Have you heard of the Pulse app? If not, download it immediately. It's free! The app collates your favorite websites into an easy to read, user-friendly interface. It is especially useful for scanning my favorite food blogs on a regular basis.

If you haven't guessed it already from the title of the blog and my last paragraph, this blog is all about food, specifically salad. I'm not fully sure what that means just yet. I might review some of my favorite restaurant salads, but mostly, I will be sharing recipes for the low-cost, healthy salad recipes I take to work for lunch almost every day. And because I like routine and advance planning, I usually try a new salad about once a week and go with it for three to five days each week. Hence, The Weekly Salad (more on the title of this blog in a future post).

That's all for now. Salad recipes coming soon. This week's theme is Asian-inspired.