Day 6 Salad 6 - Another Mixed Salad

This is just a simple salad. You can add whatever you have on hand. This is what I had tonight.

Ingredients:
4 c spinach
1 c butter lettuce
1/2 peeled red apple cut into bite size chunks
6 grape tomatoes - halved
2 oz garlic herb goat cheese
1/4 c dried cranberries
1/4 c pecans
1/4 c shredded carrot
bacon bits

ok y'all. I made this yesterday. I just threw it together. You can too.

Day 2 Salad 2 - Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing

It's day 2 and I made another great salad. I saw this recipe on Good Eats and thought "YUM!" so I took this opportunity to try it out. After a bit of research online, I saw that some recipes add shallots and honey mustard to the dressing and that sounded even better, so I went ahead and added them here.

OK- the one bummer in making this warm dressing is you have to have everyone ready to eat when you whip up the dressing- otherwise it separates. It really does need to be served immediately.

Another tip is to age your eggs if you are using farm fresh eggs. The fresher they are, the harder they are to peel. I keep my eggs for hard-boiling in the fridge for a couple of weeks.


Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing (This is my version of Alton Brown's recipe from Good Eats on the Food Network)

Ingredients

8 ounces young spinach
2 large eggs
8 pieces thick-sliced bacon, chopped
1 shallot chopped
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tsp Hot Honey mustard (I used Harry and David- that's just what I had in the door of my fridge- Thanks Mom)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 white mushrooms, halved and sliced
1/4 of a small red onion, very thinly sliced

Directions

Remove the stems from the spinach and wash, drain and pat dry thoroughly. Place into a large mixing bowl and set aside.

Place the eggs into a pot and cover with cold water by at least 1-inch. Once the water comes to a boil, take the pot off the burner and set aside. Leave the eggs in the water for 15 minutes. take from hot water and put into an ice bath for 5 minutes. Remove and peel off the shell. Slice each egg into 8 pieces and set aside.

While the eggs are cooking, fry the bacon and remove to a paper towel to drain, reserving 3 tablespoons of the rendered fat. Crumble the bacon and set aside.

Transfer the fat to a small saucepan set over low heat add the chopped shallots and cook for 2 minutes and then whisk in the red wine vinegar and hot honey mustard. Season with a small pinch each of kosher salt and black pepper.

Add the mushrooms and the sliced onion to the spinach and toss. Add the dressing and bacon and toss to combine. Add the egg. Season with pepper, as desired. Serve immediately.


This salad was rich and decadent. I felt some pressure to eat it fast so that dressing was still warm, but other than that, it was a winner.

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.