Salad #2: Hodge Podge d'Jen

Oh. Ma. Gawd. I just discovered two things that will forever help me with salads:

1) Cut everything up really small
2) Use only a small amount of greens

And of course, the ingredients are a very big deal, and I seem to have found a pretty good combination. I really didn't know what proportions to use when I started so I made a general rule of 2/3 cup of each item. Some items I added a little more, some I used a little less. Here's the rundown:

Baby arugula (1 cup)
Cherry tomatoes, halved (2/3 cup)
Red seedless grapes, halved (2/3 cup)
Hard boiled egg, chopped (1)
Avocado, chopped (1)
Cucumber, chopped (2/3 cup)
Carrot, shredded (2/3 cup)
Red onion, diced (1/3 cup)
Red bell pepper, diced (1/3 cup)
Maple Grove Farms All Natural Strawberry Balsamic dressing (4 tbsp)

This dressing is amazing: it's 25 calories per 2 tablespoons. I had planned to make my own, but since I have this entire bottle (purchased for a New Year's Eve event and never opened) I think it'll be my dressing darling for a while.

This whole mixture comes in at about 625 calories. More than half of that is from the avocado, and of course, the egg is a big part as well. So if I go back for the rest of it right now (which is a certainty), that'll be a 625 calorie lunch for me, which is more calories than I'm used to. Next time I'll use less avocado (I almost used only half an avocado, but the other half looked soooo good) and get all these good veggies without loading up on the calories.

So, next time: less avocado, more grapes, possibly more red bell pepper. (I can't taste it at all, but I used only 1/3 cup because I'm not its biggest fan. I love roasted red peppers on a sandwich, but raw peppers aren't usually for me.)

YUM! This one is a winner. Salad #1, the Russian Beet Salad was OK too, but this one easily took the lead for me.

Salad idea...

I know, I know, I've only been doing this daily-salad thing for one day. (And that was yesterday; today I exempted myself because Friday is free pizza day at work, so that's basically all I eat.) But I know the salads are going to be a problem for me. Eating a pile of plants just isn't satisfying to me. As I blogged yesterday, it can be filling, but still plain unsatisfying.

At the beginning of this I thought I'd stick to veggies only in my salads, since that's the ingredient missing from my diet. But now I'm thinking that I can add a little bit of something else. The salads should still be mostly-veggie, but I can use accent ingredients, such as a little pasta. I love pasta salad, so I'm thinking that I could have a pasta salad that's super-heavy on the vegetables.

And this morning an e-mail landed in my inbox with a link to this recipe for a Crab, Corn, and Tomato Salad. Now that sounds super-yummy. Once I get through the produce currently in my kitchen (which, I again bemoan, cost thirty-four dollars and eighty-two cents) I think I'll get some crab and corn salad fixins.

Salad #1: Russian Beet Salad

I chose my first salad recipe from Mollie Katzen's The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. I've had this cookbook for much longer than I've tolerated vegetables, but these days it's one of my two favorites.

This salad involves beets, vinegar, onions, cucumbers, eggs and dill. Luckily the recipe is already available online so I don't have to type it in (and am concerned about the legality/morality of doing so anyway):

Russian Beet Salad

I opted to not use yogurt. Also, I accidentally left my grocery list in the car so I shopped from memory, and forgot to purchase honey. So I used a little sugar instead. I halved the recipe, so we're only talking about lacking 1/2 - 1 tsp honey.

Also because I forgot my list, I accidentally purchased fennel. Now I need to figure out what to do with it.

Anyway, here's what I thought of Russian beet salad:

Good flavor! This is pretty much my first experience with beets. At least, with a dish focused on beets. It's so beety that the whole salad turned red. Onions, eggs, cukes and all. I was going to take a picture of each salad I make for blogging purposes, but this pretty much looks like a bowl-o'-red.

The proportion of ingredients is perfect. I can taste the onions and cucumbers, a little dill here and there (I was wary of the amount of dill required), and it all has a slight tang of vinegar. Oh yes, and there's taste of egg right there. Really, it's amazing that I can taste all of these things.

So today's lunch is entirely made up of this salad (half the halved recipe, to be precice), and I'm about half finished with it now. The thing about salads is that they can feel pretty filling. Even this one, which must be about 150 calories. But for me, getting full on salad is kind of like pushing a magic "get full" button: my hunger has been wiped out, but it was accomplished without experiencing the pleasure of really eating something. You know, something hot, bready, meaty, savory. I'm left full, but wanting a sandwich. I hope I can learn to truly savor salads.