My New Salad Obsession: Raw Brussel Sprouts

I really like brussel sprouts. I know; they are trendy. Lots of restaurants serve them. About a year ago, I ordered a side at Mesa Grill. A few weeks ago, I ordered them at Westville. (I recommend ordering every vegetable at Westville.) I regularly roast them--usually with a bit of olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper, but sometimes I make a honey-soy marinade.

Here's the thing about brussel sprouts and me. My love for them and their trendiness just happened to coincide. I first sampled brussel spouts sometime in college. I used to spend Yom Kippur with my friend Shari's family, and one year, her mom made brussel sprouts for the pre-fast meal. Wow! They were amazing. These little balls of cabbage. Who knew! Despite this revelation, I didn't cook them myself until a year or two ago when roasted brussels began to regularly make their way into my vegetable side rotation.

(A little background about vegetables and me: Growing up, there was always a vegetable served with dinner.  My mother almost always served a salad, and often there was a another vegetable side. I always opted for the salad--especially because more often than not, there was Good Seasons Italian Dressing on the side. I liked my vegetables raw. Carrots, celery, broccoli--they were all good as long as they were uncooked. Seth tells me that my youthful preference for raw vegetables is not normal. Apparently, most children prefer cooked over raw vegetables. I don't know if Seth is correct in his assertion, but I'll tell you this, it is not coincidental that for the past several years I have eated salad for my lunchtime meal.

I left for college still preferring my vegetables raw, but all of a sudden, my taste buds grew up. It probably started with steamed or sauteed broccoli and has progressed to nearly all vegetables (sans beets and most mushrooms) cooked in every imaginable way. Sometime after moving in with Seth five (!) years ago, I got on the roasting bandwagon. And more often then not, a cooked vegetable meant a roasted vegetable.)

Back to the brussels. As much as I love brussels, I started to tire of them. A salad of roasted veggies, lettuce, feta and balsamic no longer had the same appeal for me. And then I discovered the raw brussel. I had seen salads made of brussel "slaw" on food blogs, but still somewhat in fear of my Cuisinart, the idea of taking out the grating attachment seemed like too much work. Over Passover, my friend Anna served a brussel salad with grapes and hazelnuts. Yum! I asked her how she prepped the brussels, and it turns out, she just sliced them by hand. Why, I could do that! So, I did, and the rest is history. For the last two weeks, I've eaten a variety of brussel slaws and other raw greens with brussels mixed in. Lemon juice is my go-to topper, but I may experiment with apple cider vinegar this week.

Some of my recent raw brussel salads:

• Brussels, broccoli, craisins, chopped dried apricots, chopped almonds, guacamole, lemon juice;
• Kale, brussels, grapefruit, mandarins, feta, lemon juice;
• Kale or romaine, brussels, chopped dried figs, craisins, walnuts.

More salads and photos coming soon!

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!