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!