This is the stuff of life. Every day we have at least one meal with a big salad as the main dish. Thanks to Joel Fuhrman (Eat to Live), our diet has taken a quantum leap in the right direction. Probably the most important part of it is to eat salad, and LOTS of it. The key is to eat as much leafy-green and fresh-veggie food as you can. Every day.
BASIC SALAD PLAN
serves 1
Romaine lettuce
fresh veggie pieces
cottage cheese or avocado
seeds
Fill a 1 to 2 qt. bowl about halfway up with bite-sized pieces of Romaine lettuce. Top with halved cherry tomatoes, or whatever you like. Add a dollop of cottage cheese or a cut-up avocado half, drizzle about 1 Tbsp. of balsamic vinaigrette on top. Add 1 Tbsp. of pumpkin, sunflower, or freshly ground flax seeds.
Fruit Variation:
Spinach leaves
Orange segments cut in bite-sized pieces
Jack cheese cubes
Pecan or walnut halves
Marinated Variation:
Romaine lettuce
Carrot pieces marinated in vinaigrette
Sweet pickles, cut into 1/2" pieces
Gouda or cheddar cheese cubes
Pine nuts
If you have some whole-grain crackers, they're nice with this type of salad, but don't fill up on them. We like to add a little fruit dessert to this meal, like warmed peaches or berries from the freezer, topped with a touch of cinnamon, brown sugar, or even sour cream. In the summer, we make "ice cream" made with fruit, rice milk, and honey.
Use your imagination, but don't go crazy with the fats. We eat this kind of salad pretty much every other day. On the in-between days, we have denser salads like pea salad, corn salad, avocado salad--all on a bed of lettuce.
That looks wonderful!! We did a roasted squash with lemon tahini sauce that was really good the other day - Vash is a new fan of tahini. Time to break out the big salad bowl again. Thank you so much for the lists of different types of salads.
ReplyDeleteThere are many more variations, which I will post as I get around to making them.
DeleteWhat kind of squash did you use? Sounds yummy!
One thing I forgot to say in this post... these kinds of salads work best when you make them individually, instead of tossing everything in a giant salad bowl. This is because the heavier ingredients end up on the bottom, and it's really hard to get an even amount of everything in a serving. The first servings will be mostly lettuce, and the last ones will be mostly tomatoes.
DeleteSo I just line up large-ish individual bowls in a row, and put the ingredients in: lettuce first, heavy veggies next, dressing drizzle, then seeds on top. Each person gets to stir up his or her own salad as desired. You can also have the extras on the table, like seeds, beans, cheese, etc. In that case, you could serve the tossed lettuce and dressing in a big bowl, with everyone adding what they like to their own salads.
My boys would love the buffet type salad. We do tacos and burritos that way and they love putting it all together. The squash we used was Delicata and Acorn. We recently discovered Delicata squash and it has become a big favorite. Chip made the squash so I didn't have pics to blog it but we will make it again and I will post the recipe and how it came out. It was definitely worth repeating. Tonight I am thinking about the Sweet Potato pancake recipe in Moosewood - we have all the ingredients . . . .
DeleteAwesome. Delicata is great squash... will be waiting for pictures with bated breath. We are big fans of sweet potatoes, too.
ReplyDelete