In our third week of our Spring Share, we are going to be a little boring. We are just going to make a heck of a lot of salads. The salad mix and lettuces are just too good to not have a saladfest. Realizing that not everyone gets as excited as we do about salads, I thought I would use this post to share some tips on how to jazz up that regular salad. But before we get into that, let’s take a look at what we got this week.

 

Saladfest 2011

Front row from left to right: radishes, endive and turnips

Back row: Saute mix, spring mix and spinach.

Last week I tried to eat radishes the french way, with butter and salt, and discovered something. I don’t like salt that much and butter is equally gross. Why ruin a good radish with that stuff? This week, I sliced up the radishes and turnips right away so I can munch on them throughout the day and throw them on my salads.

We aren’t cooking anything with the CSA this week, even our saute mix. We are just cleaning it, mixing it up and having lots of salads. Now, salads are mainstream in the Badger Girl/Manatee household. We both have a salad for a meal and a salad with a meal every day. This may sound extremely boring to the un-initiated, but we don’t have the regular boring ole salad. Here are some things we do to jazz up our salads.

1. Cut up some avocado and throw some salsa on that salad. Bonus points if you use a salsa that has black beans and corn in it, because it gives you more variety. Salsa makes a great replacement for salad dressing, you’ll see it come up again through these tips because it is a staple in our house.

2. Add salsa (see!), greek yogurt and some coleslaw mix on top of your leafy greens. It’s a nice mix of textures and you get some great protein with the greek yogurt.

3. Manatee loves throwing scrambled eggs on his salad. Yep. Scrambled eggs. I teased him about it until I tried it and it’s actually really good.

4. In a similar vein, have a small salad with your omelette or eggs in the morning. Hey, that’s how they serve it at La Brioche! It must be fancy!

5. Add some spring mix (tossed with lemon juice and olive oil) on top of your pizza. Arugula is probably the best lettuce for this, but it’s just as good with spring mix.

6. Eat your dinner on top of the salad. You won’t need any dressing and you will save on plates. We do this all the time. It works particularly well for any kind of grilled meat with a marinade as the marinade gives a lot of flavor to your lettuce.

7. Add marinara sauce (served hot or cold) and steamed vegetables to your salad. To me, a salad with something warm, be it meat or vegetables, always seems more like a full meal than a cold salad.

8. Experiment with how you mix up a salad. A general rule is that you want to hit all the different types of taste in a dish and this translates well for salads. You want something sweet, salty, sour and neutral. Example: sesame sticks, apples, dried cranberries and blue cheese or pumpkin seeds, pears, sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese. Play around with flavors and combinations.

What other tips do you have to keep salads exciting? I’d love to hear about them.

 

 

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