New Favourite Salad Ingredients or Save Me From a Boring Salad

I grew up with boring salads. I honestly remember leaf lettuce from the garden, diced white onion, and some sort of "cream" dressing. It was probably made from cream, a little bit of sugar, maybe a bit of vinegar. I ate it, because that's what you did.

Then I became a bit "obsessed" (lord, that's an overused word out there) with Caesar salads. It was THE THING to order from the menu. In fact, I would just have a large Caesar salad, nothing else. But it had to have real bacon on it (what are those nasty little nuggets of fake bacon??), big "homemade" croutons, a good dressing... I got into making my own, rubbing the inside of the bowl with a cut clove of garlic, washing the individual leaves of the fresh (i.e. not packaged in threes, plastic wrapped romaine hearts) romaine lettuce and getting out my little salad spinner, centrifugal forcing the water out of them like mad. When I was all worried about fat and calories, I used turkey bacon instead of real bacon (ridiculous). I might even have purchased anchovy paste for the dressing. This was back in university days, early 20's, thinking I was all chef-like and special.

But mostly, salads were tossed salads with the same old boring ingredients: lettuce, cucumber, peppers, onion, and if life was really exciting, some grated cheese. Open up one of the sixteen different bottles of salad dressing (and hope it wasn't one of the expired ones), and there you go - salad.

I also came from the era of the jello salad. Now how those could be called salads is beyond me. My Aunt Lois was the queen of the jello salad and a summer family gathering had to feature one of her famous salads. Think orange jello with grated carrot. (Uncle Ed in white undershirt and socks with sandals, husband of the Aunt Lois, would also come with a giant roasting pan filled with cabbage rolls - now THAT was memorable!!)

Where am I going with all of this? Well, here is my lettuce now:

It's doing quite well, and with frequent watering, should continue for a while. I've planted another little row, which hopefully will keep us in lettuce into August. Pretty as heck, but again, boring.

So... here's my suggestion for jazzing up boring old lettuce.

Nope, not a sponsored post (but again, Unico, etc. anytime you want to advance me some money...). Marinated artichoke hearts (I cut them up a bit), marinated sun dried tomatoes, Kalamata olives, and capers. I don't even know what capers are! Are they a seed, a bud, what plant do they even come from? Throw a few of any of these in with your lettuce, maybe crumble up some feta as well, how 'bout some red onion, slices of peppers, and maybe some Greek dressing, and BOOM!   Flavour.

These ingredients are also great with a cold pasta based salad as well (think orzo, or fusilli), or even great tossed with plain, hot spaghetti and a little pesto.

And for those of you wondering what I do with all those eggs (from the previous post)? Last night was a sausage and cheese frittata (uses up eight eggs!).

Hungry yet?

Weekend De-Clutter

I'm just pooped after getting back to work for a week, hosting a relative that requires a lot of energy, and running the roads. Last night was a basketball night which was a good game between my son's team and another well-matched team. It was close but the other team won. Oh well. Next time.

Today I slept in (ahhhhh), got up and visited blogs, went into town and got groceries, took empties back to the liquor store, and bought some new foundation and moisturizer which was delightfully on sale this week!! After doing a fridge purge and wipe,  putting groceries away, and folding a huge load of towels, I sat myself down and watched a couple of episodes of "Fixer Upper". Ironically, husband is currently working on that upstairs bathroom project. He, too, had a bit of a rest from renovating after getting back to work for a week. But he is back at it today, as well as taking phone calls from people who want to buy stuff he has for sale on kijiji.

Even though I am thoroughly enjoying doing nothing, I now have this need to get rid of stuff. Maybe it's the new year, post Christmas chaos, or watching tv shows with lovely decorated, perfect rooms, but I want to tackle a few spaces this weekend and just TOSS. My husband is a bit of a saver, and I am more of a get-rid-of-er.

My first mess to sort through is my bathroom drawer that holds all of my makeup, potions, lotions, brushes, etc. You know how you are supposed to get rid of mascara after so many months... blah blah blah. Well, I imagine I have some fairly old items in there, as well as others which I haven't used because the colour wasn't quite right. It's also time to get rid of eye liner pencils which are harder than granite.

before

after (trust me, it's better)

Hmmmm, well I am continuing this post after supper and my tossing kind of stopped at the bathroom drawer. I made a really good supper, though. At the grocery store that I usually go to, they have a great deli counter where they sell all kinds of salads and rotisserie chicken and other such food already made for you to take home and enjoy. I often look at the salads and am tempted to buy some, but find that they cost quite a bit for a small amount. So, today as a lovely girl was slicing up my turkey, I had a look at what was in some of these salads and decided to pick up some of the ingredients while I was at the grocery store and make my own in much greater quantity and, hopefully, at a fraction of the cost. So, tonight I combined chickpeas, edamame, red onion, chopped up parsley, cut up cherry tomatoes, and a couple of handfuls of "carrot slaw" which is just shredded carrot and a little cabbage and broccoli slaw. I tossed it all with an oil and vinegar herb dressing (just Kraft in a bottle) and it was, in my opinion, very good! I also made roasted chicken thighs with my secret weapon, Herbes de Provence, mashed potatoes, and broccoli.

I may continue my purging tomorrow morning. Next: the closet in the mudroom which houses cleaning supplies, vacuum, other stuff that doesn't have a proper home... Are you a tosser or a keeper?