Day 3 Salad 3 - Raw Aparagus Salad

Tonight I wanted to make something super simple, so this seemed like a perfect fit.




Ingredients:

julienned raw asparagus

Mack House Dijon Vinaigrette:

good seasoning natural packet (please don't judge me)
1 big clove fresh garlic (grated on a micro-plane)
juice of 1 lime
3 Tbs red wine vinegar
1/4 c veg oil
1 tsp Dijon
splash Braggs amino acids


Simply julienne the spears (or slice them in ribbons with a vegetable peeler), toss them in a vinaigrette, and pile on a plate.

This could not be any simpler. I did not have much luck with my veggie peeler, so I just sliced the spears with a knife. It was tastier than I thought it would be. We all give this salad a big thumbs up. The baby LOVED it.

I found this recipe on the Foodista Blog. She made it for Super Bowl Sunday as a bit of green amongst the meat, cheese, and chips. The original recipe is here: http://www.foodista.com/blog/2009/02/01/raw-asparagus-salad/

Day 1 Salad 1 - Red, White, and Blue Salad

WELCOME TO MY BLOG!

I am making a commitment to eat at least one salad every day for the next year and blog about the process of making and eating it. I love salads, but I don't eat enough of them, so maybe this way I will be more motivated to eat them.

This is the first day and the first salad.


Red, White and Blue Salad:

1/4 cup baby spinach
1/4 cup baby bitter greens (I used baby chard and baby rocket)
1/4 Asian pear sliced
7 slices of sweet heat pickled beets
1/8 cup thinly sliced pickled red onion
a small chunk of Stilton blue cheese
12 candied pecans

Dijon Vinaigrette: This is my go-to dressing, the one I make most of the time

good seasoning natural packet (please don't judge me)
1 big clove fresh garlic (grated on a micro-plane)
juice of 1 lime
3 Tbs red wine vinegar
1/4 c veg oil
1 tsp Dijon
splash Braggs amino acids

Place a bed of greens on the plate. Alternate pear slices and beets slices in a circle. Place blue cheese crumbles on the pear slices. Mound the red onion in the center. Sprinkle the pecans over any open spaces. Drizzle the dressing over the salad.

Making this salad is easy peasy. Just assemble the ingredients. I sort of took the long way to gathering the ingredients. I took a can of sliced beets and drained them and stuck them in some sweet heat pickle juice for a week. Then today, I took some of the juice and soaked the thinly sliced red onion in it for about an hour. I also candied the pecans myself. I used this recipe http://suziethefoodie.blogspot.com/2009/08/candied-pecans.html.



This salad is AWESOME! The best part is you can make what I call "the perfect bite" if you stack each if the ingredients on top of each other to get a bit of each in every bite. DELISH!


Now, I made this myself, but you can purchase this salad at The Mural Cafe located at 104 N. 5th Street, Downtown Alpine, Texas 432.837.3400. They serve it with a lovely strawberry vinaigrette.