Salad Challenge Week 2

Well Leng's two week salad challenge is over and I ate salad 13 out of 14 days. Overall it's been awesome! And it's made making dinner a lot less stressful. Though with all the summer fruit and salads I've been eating I think I've been getting a bit of produce overload. So here are the salads I ate over the last week. Almost every salad we ate this week had green beans in it - can you tell that green beans are my vegetable obsession this year? I don't think I even really liked them last year. They're just so gorgeous!

On Sunday I didn't get to have an official salad because we went hiking and had a picnic lunch, then went to my mom and stepdad's for dinner. I did however have a burrito which I will just call a salad wrap since it had all the right ingredients! With lettuce, tomatoes, guacamole, sour cream, salsa, cheese and a spinach pesto wrap. Mmm love burritos.

Monday's salad we made one of my all time favourite dishes, french barley salad which I ate over romaine lettuce.

Tuesday's salad was romaine lettuce, mushrooms, green beans, honey flax crackers and this super delicious tofu beer sausage.

Wednesday's salad was romaine lettuce, snap peas, strawberries, sunflower seeds, hungarian pepper (which I got because I've never seen it before but it just tastes like green pepper), sol veggie burger, and garlic rolls.

Thursday's salad was yummy with romaine lettuce, cheese tortellini, sauteed green beans and mushrooms with herbs and garlic, and then drizzled with balsamic vinegar, olive oil and a bit of salt and pepper. I loved the balsamic vinegar with the tortellini.

Friday unfortunately I wasn't able to have a salad. I didn't think I'd be able to bring a salad to work for lunch (unless I used a giant container) and we went out for a family dinner at a Chinese restaurant.

Saturday's salad was the most exciting because I finally got to try out the salad bar and hot food bar at Whole Foods, which I've seen on other people's blogs. However, the things I tried (which was practically everything) weren't that great so now at least I can stop drooling over all the different salads and tofus that they have in their deli section. There were a lot of grain salads (quinoa, farro and others), tofu (curry, one with peppers, and a pesto one), macaroni and cheese (of course I had to try that), potato salad, etc.

Sunday's salad was really simple with romaine lettuce, blue jay pepper (purple on the outside but tastes like a green pepper), snap peas and green beans, with a balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and parmesan dressing. I've eaten a bit too much this weekend so I wasn't even hungry for dinner thus I didn't bother adding a grain.

Mediterranean Pepper Salad

I'm still eating my daily salad for the salad challenge and will post a roundup of the past week on Sunday. But for now I will post about this other really yummy salad as I want to make sure I get in on Jacqueline and Lisa's No Croutons Required pepper challenge!

Since it's been so hot here I've been craving salads a lot so I've gone through many different salad recipes over the last while. This one is a definite favourite. I've made it 3 times so far (which is a lot for me) and plan to make it many many more times. I've always wanted to make Greek salad at home but never knew how (which sounds kind of ridiculous because really, how hard is it?) - and now I feel like I've found it. Though it doesn't have any oregano, and Greek salad doesn't seem to usually have peppers. I liked eating a big bowl of this with a savoury muffin for a meal. And this salad has also made me realize how much I prefer cubes of feta to crumbles. With cubes you get a nice bite of flavourful feta - versus crumbles where you can barely taste it unless you add a ton.

If this sounds good, you might also like:
French Barley Salad
Tabbouleh
Warm Vegetable Salad with Sesame-Maple Dressing
Santa Fe Pasta Salad

Mediterranean Pepper Salad
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Makes 4 meal size servings.

1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup cold water
1 tsp salt
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 a red onion, cut into a 1/2-inch dice (use less if your onion is huge)
3 bell peppers, your choice of colors (I used one red, orange and yellow)
4 roma tomatoes (or 1 cup grape tomatoes)
1/2 long english cucumber
1/4-pound firm feta cheese
1/4 to 1/2 cup pitted sliced kalamata olives
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Swish together the red wine vinegar, water, kosher salt and sugar in a small bowl until the salt and sugar are dissolved. Add the red onion and set it aside.

Meanwhile, time to practice your knife skills. Core and seed your bell peppers and chop them into 1/2-inch pieces. Chop the tomatoes into 1/2-inch pieces. Chop the cucumber and feta into similarly-sized chunks. Put your peppers, cucumber, feta and olives in a large bowl.

By now, your onions will have lightly pickled, both sweetening and softening their blow. Drain them and add them to the other vegetables in the large bowl, but reserve the vinegar mixture. Pour a quarter cup of the vinegar mixture over the salad, then drizzle with olive oil. Season generously with salt and freshly ground black pepper, or to taste. Toss evenly and serve at once, or let the flavors muddle together in the fridge for a few hours.

Chewy, Chunky Blondies

As promised, here is a delicious baked good. Actually, this is no ordinary delicious baked good - it's an extremely yummy and perfect blondie. It's filled with toffee bits, chocolate chunks, coconut and walnuts, and is nice and dense and chewy (and a little too addictive). This comes from my favourite baking book, Baking: From My Home to Yours - a book that I would love to just live in. Every time I open it it makes me happy.

The other day I found Abby hiding under her cube and playing with her blue ball toy. She adores the cube and as you can see it's not exactly cube shaped anymore because she plays with it so much. She loves just hitting the top of it with her paw because it goes up and down. Kind of strange but really cute.

If this sounds good, you migh also like:
Monster Cookies
Double Chocolate Coconut Cookies
Peanut Butter Squares with Milk Chocolate and Oats
Hello Dolly Bars

Chewy, Chunky Blondies
Adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours

2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
8 ounces (1 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
6 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped into chips, or 1 cup store bought chocolate chips
1 cup toffee bits
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1 cup sweetened shredded coconut

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325F. Butter a 9×13-inch baking pan and put it on a baking sheet.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Working with a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter on medium speed until smooth and creamy. Add both sugars and beat for another 3 minutes, or until well incorporated. Add the eggs one by one, beating for 1 minute after each addition, then beat in the vanilla. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients, mixing just until they disappear into the batter. Using a rubber spatula, stir in the chips, nuts and coconut. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and use the spatula to even out the top.

Bake for about 40 minutes, or until a thin knife inserted into the center of the blondies comes out clean. The blondies should pull away from the sides of the pan a little and the top should be a honey brown. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 15 minutes before turning the blondies out onto another rack. Invert onto a rack and cool the blondies to room temperature right side up.

Cut into 32 bars.

More Salads! Including Portobello Salad with Mustard Dressing

Are you guys getting sick of all the salad? I promise I'll post about some delicious baked good next time.

I've admired this salad in Veganomicon ever since I got the cookbook but for some reason never made it. As soon as I decided to take part in Leng's salad challenge I knew this was something I'd have to make! Marinated roasted portobellos, avocado, red onion, chickpeas, a mustard dressing - what more can I ask for? The grain portion of my salad was some tortilla "chips" that I made by cutting a tortilla up and toasting it. This was my favourite salad out of the last 6 salads. The roasted portobellos were really good and I loved the marinade so will use it with other vegetables or tofu. However I do not enjoy how expensive portobellos are.

Friday's salad was the least delicious salad of the week and also included ruining one of our pots when we were steaming the beets. Hopefully we can salvage it. Anyway the salad included beets, red onion, homemade garlic oregano basil parmesan breadcrumbs (didn't use enough oil this time to get things to stick to the bread), grated carrot, tofu marinated in the leftover portobello marinade, olives, red leaf lettuce, and the rest of the mustard dressing from the day before.

Today's salad was delicious crunchy romaine lettuce, beets, chickpeas, grated Gouda cheese, whole wheat pasta, and Caesar dressing. I love having the gouda in there.

I find it hard to come up with salads that incorporate grains. I think I prefer eating something on the side like bread or a savoury muffin or something. And I think I'm getting stuck trying to come up with yummy salad combinations. Any suggestions?

Portobello Salad with Mustard Dressing
Adapted from Veganomicon

Serves 4

Dressing
1/4 cup smooth mustard (Ashley note: I used some balsamic fig mustard I had but next time I'll go for dijon.)
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 tbsp pure maple syrup

Salad
8 cups mixed greens
1 avocado, peeled, halved, pitted and cubed
1 small red onion, sliced into very thin half moons
15 ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 recipe Roasted Portobellos (recipe follows)

Preparing the dressing: Whisk all the ingredients together in a small bowl.

Toss all the salad ingredients together, except the portobellos. Add the dressing. Divide up the salad and place the sliced warm portobellos on top of each salad.

Roasted Portobellos
Adapted from Veganomicon

1/2 cup wine
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 large or up to 4 small portobello caps

Clean the portobello caps. Combine all ingredients for the marinade in a glass pie plate or small casserole. Place the mushrooms upside down in the marinade and spoon a lot of the marinade into each cap to form a small pool. Preheat the oven to 400F and marinated for about 20 minutes.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil, use tongs to flip the caps over, and cook, uncovered, for another 10 minutes. Let it cool a bit and then slice the mushrooms very thinly on the diagonal to make nice meaty slices.

Salad Challenge Day 2 & 3 - The Diva Salad

Last night's salad was called the "diva salad" and I found the recipe in Fresh at Home. I've only made a few things from this cookbook but I think with its salads, noodle dishes, rice bowls and other delicious healthy things it will fast become a favourite. The diva had romaine lettuce, potato wedges (you're supposed to roast the potato yourself but we have these yummy frozen seasoned ones so just used those), capers, sun dried tomatoes, red onion, avocado and creamy dill dressing - with another piece of jalapeno cheddar cornbread. I was really interested in the creamy dill dressing because it uses firm tofu, onions, dill, garlic, dijon, vinegar and some oil. It was pretty good and something different, and I loved that the dressing contains so much protein (because of the tofu). But it was impossible (at least with my food processor) to get a smooth non lumpy dressing. It was kind of like ricotta. This salad was really filling and very satisfying.

Tonight's salad used up last night's creamy dill dressing. We used romaine and red leaf lettuce, red bell pepper, olives, red onion, green onions, feta, and homemade garlic oregano bread crumbs. The bread crumbs were super delicious and definitely were an integral part of the salad!

The Diva Salad
Adapted from Fresh at Home

As I mentioned, we used some frozen seasoned potato wedges. But I'll write out the recipe as is. Next time I'll add more capers, more onion, and cut the sun dried tomatoes into bigger pieces because I couldn't really taste them.
Serves 2

8 frozen potato wedges (or make your own potato wedges)
6 cups mixed lettuce greens
2 tbsp capers, drained
1/2 batch Creamy Dill Dressing (recipe below)
6 sun dried tomatoes, rehydrated if dried, sliced thinly
2 thin slices red onion
1 ripe avocado, sliced

Salad
1. Toss lettuce greens and capers with creamy dill dressing. (I didn't do this and realized afterwards that I really should have.) Divide between 2 salad bowls.

2. Top with sun dried tomatoes, red onion and avocado.

3. Arrange potato wedges vertically around edges of salad and serve.

Creamy Dill Dressing
Adapted from Fresh at Home

3 tbsp + 1 tsp olive oil
1 cooking onion, diced
3 cloves garlic
2 cups chopped firm tofu (1 package)
1 tbsp dried dillweed
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 tsp dijon mustard (Ashley note: I love mustard so I'd add more next time.)
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
filtered water (optional)

1. Heat 1 tsp of oil in a skillet over medium heat.

2. Saute the onion and garlic for 5 minutes or until softened. Set aside and let cool.

3. Put onion/garlic mixture, remaining olive oil, tofu, dillweed, salt, mustard and vinegar in a blender and process until smooth. Add water if needed for a smooth consistency.