Chopped salads = easiest weeknight dinners!

My body has been craving salads, which is unusual for late December. I think that it is telling me to get some nutrients after my holiday indulgences, and I agree. I haven't been doing very well with the ketogenic lifestyle lately, and it is time to get back on track.

Whenever I crave salad, I want something interesting and somewhat gourmet, but I don't always have a lot of time to wash and prep my veggies. I am also somewhat picky about salad greens, because I can not tolerate the chunky white parts of lettuce, so I take a lot of time to go through and remove all of them whenever I make a salad. I discovered these new(ish) Dole chopped salad kits, and they are good! They are easy to eat, since everything is chopped into little pieces, and there isn't much of the chunky white parts to pick out.

We stopped at the grocery store on the way home from work tonight, and I got a Sunflower Crunch chopped salad kit, which has cabbage, kale, carrots, sunflower seeds, bacon bits and a sweet onion citrus dressing. It was $3.49. I also got a rotisserie chicken for $6. Rotisserie chicken is the best thing ever for low carbers. I don't have time to roast chickens! Nor do I really care to touch raw chickens. $6 is such a low price to pay for the convenience of getting one ready to eat. And they are always so juicy and delicious. We took our ingredients home, chopped up the chicken, dumped the salad and chicken into a bowl, tossed with dressing, and devoured. You can't get much easier and healthier than that! And, compared to our usual habit of going out to eat all the time, it was very economical at just under $10 for two people. I've made it my New Year's resolution to eat way more of this meal in different variations- I am thinking around three times a week. Besides Sunflower Crunch, these chopped salads also come in the following flavors: Sesame Asian, Bacon & Bleu, BBQ Ranch, Chipotle Cheddar, and Summer Garden Blend. (Dole should be paying me for this free advertising, but they're not!) That will ensure I am getting all kinds of good vitamins and protein, and it will be so fast and easy. That is a resolution that I think I can stick to!

Thanksgiving salad

organized for your viewing pleasure

A few weeks ago, Kent made a turkey because we not only wanted a traditional turkey dinner, we also wanted leftover turkey to make jambalaya and for this salad I dreamed up. This is like a Thanksgiving dinner in salad form, and it is delicious! I invented this salad around one of the balsamic vinegars I got from Allspice in Des Moines- a cinnamon pear flavored one.

Thanksgiving Salad

Salad:
1 bag pre-washed butter lettuce
2 cups leftover turkey meat
2 pears, thinly sliced
1 cup dried cranberries
4 oz apricot Stilton cheese
1/2 of a red onion, thinly sliced
4 oz pecan halves

Dressing:
1 part cinnamon pear balsamic vinegar (or use Alessi pear infused white balsamic)
1 part Splenda
1 part olive oil
splash of water to thin

Toss salad, shake dressing, et voila! Makes 2 large meal sized servings.

nom nom nom

Cooking with dog!

Arrroooo! (That's a dog howl...) I don't mean cooking dog meat! I am talking about this fun Japanese cooking show that Kent showed me the other night. The narrator/host of the show is a French poodle, who is voiced by a Japanese guy attempting a French accent. It's ridiculous, but entertaining. This is the episode that we watched, and decided to try to make these ourselves. I'm not going to post the recipe, since it is all clearly spelled out in the video.

We were already familiar with shirataki noodles- pasta made from konjac, a high fiber root, that have zero calories and zero net carbs. We hadn't yet tried to use them for an Asian noodle bowl, but our favorite Vietnamese restaurant recently closed, so we have to do it ourselves now. We had a few differences between our version and the video recipe. We used ribeye instead of sirloin steak. We used splenda + stevia instead of sugar in the sauce. We left out the bean sprouts. Kent added both fresh ginger and jarred garlic to the sauce. It didn't make sense to us to not include garlic! We garnished ours with fresh mint and Thai basil, as well as some fresh jalepeno slices that we let soak in the sauce while the noodles chilled.

Here are our results!

Tasteful noods.

Shirataki Noodle Bowls

2 pouches Miracle Noodle shirataki noodles, drained and rinsed well
2 ribeye steaks (charcoal grilled)
1 cucumber, cut into matchsticks
1 tomato, diced
2 eggs, scrambled into a thin omelette and sliced into strips

Sauce:
3 Tablespoons soy sauce
4 Tablespoons rice vinegar
1 Tablespoon Splenda
1 Tablespoon granulated stevia
2.4 oz water (we used a 1 oz shot glass to measure this out)
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon minced ginger
3/4 Tablespoon minced garlic

Garnish:
1 fresh jalepeno, sliced
fresh basil leaves
fresh mint leaves

Drain and rinse noodles after removing them from their bags. Boil in water for a minute. Drain and pat dry. In a dry skillet, cook noodles briefly to remove any excess water. Set noodles aside. Mix sauce, and spoon half of it over noodles. Set remaining sauce aside for finishing bowls. Slice the jalepeno and put the slices in the bowl of sauce. Grill steaks and make omelette. Let omelette cool and cut into thin strips. Also slice steak into strips. Set eggs and steak aside. Cut up vegetables. In two bowls, place half of the noodles in each. Top with steak and egg strips, cucumber and tomato. Garnish with basil, mint, and jalepeno slices to taste. Top with half of remaining sauce in each bowl.

The next day, I used the leftover ingredients as part of a delicious Asian salad. Kent turned the leftover sauce into a salad dressing, by adding some vegetable oil and a little more sesame oil to it, then shaking to combine in a jar.

Yum! 

Asian Steak Salad

Grilled sirloin steak, sliced into strips

butter lettuce

sliced cucumbers

sliced radishes

shredded carrots

shelled edamame

peanuts

Asian vinagrette dressing- soy sauce, rice vinegar, minded garlic and ginger, sesame oil, stevia/splenda, and vegetable oil

Shake up dressing, adjust ingredients to taste. Combine all other ingredients in a bowl and toss. Easy!

Recipe: Asian Crunch Salad with Grilled Chicken

It's my goal to come up with as many different salads this summer as I can. The timing of starting a low carb diet in the summer is great, because this is when my body naturally craves fresh, cool, crisp salads the most. There are so many possible delicious combinations of flavors! I am also determined to show the world that low carb doesn't necessarily mean only eating greasy plates of meat. That stuff definitely has its place when you are trying to get a high ratio of your calories from fat. But I try to balance it so that if we have one meal that is full of meat or melty cheese, we also eat a meal in the same day that is very laden with vegetables. Gotta get some fiber, and some vitamins, too!

So crunchy and satisfying!

Asian Crunch Salad with Grilled Chicken

1/2 a bag of coleslaw mix
2/3 of a bag of shredded iceberg lettuce
1 can no sugar added mandarin oranges, drained
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and sliced into half moons
1 bag of radishes, pre cut into matchsticks
1/2 a bunch of fresh cilantro, chopped
1/4 cup chopped cashews

For dressing:
 (Makes enough for two batches)
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil
3/4  cup splenda
2 shakes of soy sauce
1 Tablespoon minced garlic from a jar
fresh cracked black pepper
a little water to thin it out, if you want
1 Tablespoon smooth peanut butter

(Everything above the peanut butter is Kent's normal recipe for balsamic vinaigrette that we use all the time, because it is so magical and delicious. I call it Kent's Magical Balsamic Vinaigrette. This version just added a little peanut butter to make it a little more Asian flavored. I think it would also be good with a little bit of sesame oil in it.)

Combine all dressing ingredients into a lidded jar and shake to combine. It might be helpful to melt the peanut butter in the microwave first. We had to use a fork to break it up a little. Combine all salad ingredients in a bowl and toss with half of the dressing to combine.

Recipe: Stawberry Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette

This is one variation of our famous strawberry salad. I am so glad that strawberries are one of the lower carb fruits, because they are my favorite. We've experimented with some variable ingredients in this salad, like spinach instead of butter lettuce, and pecans instead of sunflower seeds. As long as you have the strawberries, blue cheese, onion and balsamic dressing, the basic flavor profile is there.

As delicious as it is beautiful.

Strawberry Salad

1 bag of ready to eat butter lettuce or other salad greens like spinach or spring mix
10-12 strawberries, thinly sliced
1/3 of a cup of blue cheese crumbles
1/2 a small red onion, thinly sliced
3 Tablespoons shelled sunflower seeds, almonds, or pecans
Kent's Magical Balsamic Vinaigrette

 
This dressing made me love salads. That's powerful stuff. This is more of a formula than a recipe. You can use any kind of vinegar or oil, or add whatever extra herbs or spices to customize it to the salad you're using it with. We really like it with pear flavored vinegar. It is also nice with a little sesame oil and peanut butter to make it Asian style. The possibilities are endless.


Kent's Magical Balsamic Vinaigrette

Kent usually make this so that each part is equal to a half cup. That way, it makes enough for two or more family sized salads. 
 
1 part balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 part splenda (we tried stevia, and for some reason the brand we tried, Stevia in the Raw, made the vinegar taste bitter, so we are sticking to Splenda for salad dressing only, and we try to use stevia for other things.)
1 part olive oil
1/2 part water, to thin it out a little
1 heaping spoonful minced garlic from a jar
a few dashes of soy sauce
freshly ground black pepper
Whisk it up in a bowl, or shake it up in a jar. Viola!

Recipe: Smoked Salmon Salad with Creamy Lemon Garlic Dill Dressing

We have a stockpile of salmon in our freezer right now. When we got our new car in February, the salesman from the Volkswagen dealership chatted with Kent, and found out that he works at a company that designs computer games, and is therefore fairly computer savvy. He asked Kent if he'd be willing to help him with his computer, which wasn't working, so Kent went over and ended up replacing the hard drive and revamping it for him. As a token of appreciation, we received a bunch of the salmon and trout that he had caught. This is just the kind of funny stuff that happens to Kent, being a nice guy and willing to help people. We'd already tried some of it grilled, and wanted to try to smoke it at home. Kent loves his Trager pellet-fed smoker, and found a recipe on how to smoke his own salmon. It turned out great! I wanted to use it to make some sort of recipe that used the same flavors as one of my all time favorite pasta dishes, minus the pasta, of course. This is what we came up with.

Pre-mixing, so you can see what's in it!

 Smoked Salmon Salad with Creamy Lemon Garlic Dill Dressing

1 large filet of smoked salmon (probably need 2 if using store bought)
1 package of Spring Mix salad greens
6 radishes, thinly sliced
1/2 of an English cucumber, thinly sliced
1/2 package of sugar snap peas, roughly chopped
1/4 of a red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 a pint of cherry tomatoes, each one cut in half

For dressing:
1 cup mayonaise
1/2 pint of buttermilk, approximately
1 Tablespoon dried dill
1 Tablespoon lemon zest
Juice from that lemon
1 Tablespoon minced garlic from a jar, including garlic bits and some of the juice
1/2 Tablespoon cracked black pepper
pinch of Maldon or other salt

Whisk mayo in a bowl, and add buttermilk a little at a time until the consistency looks right. Add remaining ingredients and whisk to combine.
I like to use my mandolin slicer to get perfectly uniform slices of radish and cucumber. I even used it for the red onion, and that method completely eliminated any onion tears. In a large bowl, combine all salad ingredients. Take a picture for Instagram. (Wait, that's just me.)
Pour all dressing on the salad and toss to combine. This makes enough for 3 huge salads, so if you plan on taking some for lunch the next day, set aside some of the dressing first and pack up your lunch portion of salad before you put the dressing on the rest to keep it crisp.

Here it is all mixed up and ready to eat. It is so hard to force myself to stop and take pictures first, but I do it for the greater good. :)