Fiesta Salad and Housewives

In the three weeks that my husband and I have been back from our Australian vacation, we've hosted two small gatherings to celebrate our birthdays. As Jews, we are forbidden to send our guests home hungry. Needless to say, we have lots of leftovers falling into categories of cookies and cheese. Today, I will tackle the cheese.

The husband insisted on buying a GIANT block of Manchego for our first gathering. Manchego, being a Spanish sheep's milk cheese, naturally inspires a Latin-theme salad. My Latin food tastes skew Mexican (and we had all the right ingredients in the house already, including another party leftover, chips and salsa), so I decided the use some of the Spanish cheese in a Mexican salad. And guess what. It worked!

As Andy Cohen would say, here's what (makes two big salads):

• leftovers: tortilla chips. salsa and Manchego;

• 1 head of romaine;
• 1 pepper (I used orange, but any color would work);
• 2/3 an avocado;
• 1/3 can of black beans, rinsed;
• 1/3 can of corn;

• a few sprigs of fresh cilantro;
• granulated garlic;
• lemon or lime juice.

Here's how:

1. Chop the romaine and pepper.
2. Combine with the chopped avocado, corn and beans.
3. Grate or finely slice the Manchego and add to the salad.
4. Finely chop the cilantro (I used about 1-2 tablespoons) and add to salad with 1-2 tablespoons of lemon or lime juice and granulated garlic to taste.
5. Toss salad and add a few tablespoons of the salsa to taste. Toss again.
6. Crumble tortilla chips on top for crunch.

Finished product:

Since the salad makes two portions, I ate one for dinner and packed the other up as a lunch salad. I left the tortilla chips on the side and crumbled them in at work. The salad was a little deflated the next day, but boy, it was still delicious!

Earlier in the post, I mentioned Andy Cohen, Bravo's executive vice president of development and talent. As far as I know, Andy has nothing to do with salad. (I would know; I read his book.) But, since this is my blog, it makes sense that I blog about things I like, and believe it or not, I like more than salad. I also like. . .wait for it. . .the Real Housewives of New York, New Jersey, Atlanta, Beverly Hills, and of course, Bethenny (who I think would greatly appreciate this salad blog). I know, high quality. And I just need to take a moment to sort out some thoughts about the recent goings-on of the Housewives. 

I am a few episodes behind on RHONY, so forgive the lateness of the observation. I don't know what to do with Ramona. Do I like her? Do I think she is crazy? Do her facial expressions remind me of my mother's? Yes! Yes! Yes! On a recent episode of Housewives, Ramona orders Aviva, another housewife, out of the pool because she is not wearing her swimming leg. (Back-story: Aviva lost part of her leg in a childhood accident. She now wears a prosthetic leg below the knee.) I hope Ramona did this out of concern for Aviva, but it was totally inappropriate. Later in the episode at a dinner party hosted by Aviva and her husband, Ramona orders Aviva's kitchen staff to skip the salad course and go straight to the main dish. Mind you, Ramona is a guest at Aviva's Miami apartment!

But here is where everything becomes really confusing! On the next episode, Ramona calms down her friend, Sonja, who appears to be drunk, after Sonja yells at another housewife's boyfriend. In this moment, Ramona helps her friend avoid further embarrassment, appropriately taking control of the situation. So who is Ramona, an overbearing nag or a caring friend? I have no idea. Discuss.

8 Days of Salad

Just three more hours to go until the end Passover! Passover, the Jewish festival of freedom, is a festival free from bread, pasta, cereal and other leavened products made from grain. (The exception, of course, is matzah.) Thus, in Lizland, it is a festival of salads.

While I usually eat salad for lunch during the week, on weekends, I tend to mix it up a bit. Passover is an exception to my routine, where I've happily indulged in at least one salad per day for the past eight days.

I'm still figuring out this whole blogging thing, so I haven't yet written about any of my Passover salads. From reading other food blogs, I realize that I am supposed to write about kosher-for-Passover recipes before Passover. That way, the recipes can be used during the holiday. Thankfully, the salads I prepared over the last week can be made any time. For that matter, my salads rarely include foods, such as croutons, that would be prohibited during Passover, so most of the recipes on this blog will likely work for Passover.

Where to start? Naturally, with my favorite. Despite my self-proclaimed salad skills, I don't like every salad that I make--they are not all favorites! Even when I am not fond of a salad, I will usually eat it as I am not one to throw out food (except for the time I mixed up the garlic salt and the crushed red peppers when making dressing. . . that salad was just too salty to eat!).

This past week, I have been obsessed with feta and avocado. Both ingredients performed in starring roles in my lunch salads Tuesday through Friday.

In addition to one serving of feta and half an avocado cut into small chunks, each salad included:

• 1/2 a head of Romaine
• 3-4 sweet mini peppers
• a generous handful of chopped broccoli.

Depending on the days, the salad may have also included:

• 2 stalks of chopped celery
• 3-4 chopped scallions.

I find that between the creaminess of the avocado and the saltiness of the feta, there is little need for dressing on this sort of salad. I used a few tablespoons of lemon juice to keep the avocado from browning but that's the closest I get to dressing.

By the way, this is first year I've had feta on Passover. My husband found a kosher-for-Passover Israeli brand, Tnuva, at our local kosher grocery. The feta was excellent! So much so, that my husband and I purchased a giant block of Tnuva feta from Costco earlier this week. Let's hope it keeps, or else the next few weeks are going to be full of feta salads!

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!