Strawberry spring mix salad

This is a nice integration of fruits with greens. I've got this idea from Maple, the lady who did the catering of my wedding. She makes a great strawberry spinach salad.

Recipe: Strawberry spring mix salad (for 2)

Ingredients:
- 2 cups of spring mix salad
- 5 fresh strawberries, cubed
- 1 TB blue cheese crumbled
- 1 TB honey
- 1 TB red wine vinegar,
- 1 tp lime juice
- dash of black pepper
- 2 TB olive oil

Procedure:
1. Mix honey, vinegar, lime juice and black pepper.
2. Place strawberries and spring mix greens in a medium bowl. Mix with blue cheese crumbs.
3. Add the dressing. Mix until greens have shrunk gently.
4. Add olive oil. Mix. Serve right away.

Results:
6:46pm, greens, strawberries, and dressing mixture without olive oil:

6:52pm, salad ready to serve:

Observations:
This salad is very tasty! The honey complements the strawberries greatly, while the acids go very well with the greens.

Hubby's favorite caesar's salad

Hubby likes caesar's salads, especially in hot summer days. Basically, he likes romaine lettuce, parmesan cheese, carrots, and the white lightly sweet and sour dressing. So I try making something like that for him. After his first mouthful, he simply put his thumb up, speechless. The charm in this salad lies in the small amount of pineapple and dried cranberries, along with a little walnuts, and some freshly toasted croutons.

Recipe: Caesar salad (for 2)

Ingredients:
- 1/3 cup of fresh croutons from about 2 thin slices of French bread or fried bread
- 4 cups of 1"-cut romaine and escarole lettuces
- 1 small carrot, shredded very thinly
- 1 slice of pineapple, cut to 1/4" wedges
- 1 TB of pineapple juice
- 1 TB dried cranberries
- 1/4 cup walnut pieces
- dash of pepper
- dash of celery seeds
- 1/3 cup (or two generous scoops) or miracle whip

Procedure:
1. To prepare fresh croutons, spread a thin layer of butter on staled French bread, then cut into 1" cubes. Bake at 350 F for just a few minutes. Watch carefully and turn heat off once the crumbs are golden. For more uniformly baked croutons, trim off crust and bake separately, because crust generally browns faster than the crumb. Croutons made from crust can taste just as good as from crumb as long as they are not over baked. If fried bread is used, then slice it while frozen, because fried bread tends to be soft.
2. Mix all the vegetables, fruits and nuts together. Shake well. Add miracle whip. Then sprinkle pepper and celery seeds. Lastly, sprinkle croutons on top just before serving.

Observations:
For a good salad, the following points are noted:
1. Use equal amount of green leaves and white stems from the lettuce. If possible, use the center part of each lettuce leaf because it has both green and white parts, and is both crispy and flavorful.
2. The ratio of lettuce to carrot is about 4 large leaves to 1 small carrot.
3. Carrot needs to be finely shredded because it's hard.
4. Use flavorful ingredients, such as pineapple, cranberries, walnuts, in small portions. About 1-2 TB of each ingredients will be good, because they are very flavorful.
5. Drain all water from the vegetables before mixing the salad.
6. Use sufficient miracle whip to dress the vegetables thoroughly. Miracle whip is a thick dressing. This helps keep the salad thick.
7. Do not add the crouton to the dressed salad until it's time to eat.

This is such an excellent salad, hubby wants to have it all to himself!

Sima's salad

My Persian friend knows my veggie-junkie appetite. Whenever I visit her, she'd make me a huge tray of salads. Her salads are always fanciful, with a distinctively middle-Eastern (ample herbs and no sugar!). And I really love it.

Recipe: Sima's salad (half to one veggie junkie's serving)

Ingredient:
- 1 plum tomato
- 1 small Persian cucumber or Costco's small cucumber
- 1 stalk celery
- 1 stalk spring onion
- 1 TB Parsley flakes
- 1 TB mint flakes
- 1 TB red wine vinegar
- 1 TB lemon juice
- 2 TB olive oil
- salt and pepper to taste
- a few walnut pieces

Procedure:
 Chop all vegetables to 1/2" cubes. Mix with all dried herbs. Add vinegar, lemon juice and olive oil. Toss or mix well. Sprinkle salt and pepper. Add walnut pieces. Serve.

Spring mix salad with longan, spicy pineapple, and sunflower seeds

Spring mix salad is a collection of young leaves of deep colors. These vegetables do not high water content, and is a little strong in flavor. I like them with some dry fruits, chewy seeds or nuts, lemon and red wine vinegar, along with olive oil. Here is a variation.

Recipe: Spring mix salad with longan, spicy pineapple, and sunflower seeds (for 1)

Ingredients:
- 3-4 cups spring mix salad
- 3-4 dried longan, torn to small pieces
- 1 piece of spicy pineapple preserve, cut into small pieces
- 2-3 TB extra virgin olive oil
- 2 TB raw sunflower seeds
- 1 TB lemon juice
- 1 TB red wine vinegar
- flakes of hint-of-salt triscuit

Procedure:
Mix all ingredients and shake. Serve.

root vegetables salad

Recently, I have been exploring the potential of root vegetables. Their unique flavors do not make them easy goers like lettuces. Their change of taste and texture with heat invites all kinds of imaginations. But down to the root, there is something about their rawness that begs for attention. So I am trying out a root vegetables salad.

Recipe: Root vegetables salad (for 1)

Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup beets, diced to 1/2" cubes
- 1/4 cup canned rutabagas
- 1 TB sweet corn kernels
- 2 TB carrot, finely diced
- 1 tomatillo, sliced
- 1/4 cup boiled potato or bread crumbs
- 1/2 pear or peach, diced to 1/2" cubes

- 1/2 head of romaine lettuce heart, finely chopped

Dressing
- 1 clove minced garlic

- 1 tp honey (optional)

- juice of 1 key lime

- dash of salt
- dash of pepper

Procedure:
Mix all cubed vegetables and fruits. Toss with dressing. Then serve on top of romaine lettuce. If bread crumbs are used, sprinkle on top. Serve right away.

Light spring mix salad

Among so many vegetables, one of my very big favorite is the spring mix salad. It's really simple to the point that I don't think any recipe is really needed. But then, I still like to keep a record of it in its very basic form. This salad is a real treat for vegetable junkies like me.

Recipe: Spring mix salad (for one)

Ingredients:
- 1 pack (about 6 oz) of spring mix salad
- 1 tablespoon (TB) of dried cranberries and dried longan mix
- 3 TB blueberries
- 3 TB walnut small pieces, or pine nuts
- 4 low sodium triscuits crushed

Dressing:
- 1 teaspoon (tp) red wine vinegar
- 2 tp lemon juice
- 2 tp olive oil
- 1/2 tp maple syrup
- dash of black pepper
- dash of salt

Procedure:
Mix all the ingredients of the salad, except the triscuits, in a large bowl. Mix the ingredients of the dressings thoroughly, then pour into the bowl and mix well with the salad ingredients. Finally, add the croutons on top and mix again. Serve right away.

Kohlrabi salad

Times and again, I come home with a bunch of items I've never heard of or seen before. This week, the aliens in the shopping bag include a festival squash and a kohlrabi. So one afternoon, I find myself searching for kohlrabi in the web, and discovering that it's a mild-tasting turnip. And then, here comes my salad. I like salads very much because of the fullness it gives to the stomach without any weighty feeling. In general, the more ingredients there are, usually the better the salad tastes. For a good salad composition, I like to use mild, crispy, and even bland items as the main ingredients. Kohlrabi turns out to be one such material. Cucumber, snow pea, red pepper and chickpea are great too. Ingredients with strong flavors and distinctive textures are used in sparing quantities, so that they heighten the excitement of the senses. In this salad, the apple, peanut, onion and ham used for this purpose. The dressing is a mix of spiciness in the dijon mustard and with the sweet flavor of hoisin sauce. The roasted sesame gives an extra aroma, which along with the peanuts and hoisin sauce, reminds me of rojak. Festival squash has a nice color and a sweet taste, but it's hard to munch. So I use only a small quantity for its color.

Recipe: Kohlrabi salad (for 1)

Ingredients:
- 1/3 cup kohlrabi, very thinly sliced
- 1/4 cup cucumber, very thinly sliced
- 1/4 cup snow peas, halved
- 1/3 cup red pepper, cut to 1" strips
- 2 tablespoons (TB) apple, cut to 1/2" small pieces
- 1 tablespoon (TB) cooked chickpeas
- 1 TB festival squash, cut to 1/4" small pieces (else it's hard to munch)
- 1 teaspoon (tp) peanuts
- 1 tp onion, finely chopped
- 2 tp chopped ham
Dressing
- 1 tp dijon mustard
- 1 tp hoisin sauce
- 2 tp lemon juice
- 1 tp red wine vinegar
- 2 tp roasted sesame

Procedure:
Mix all salad ingredients and place in a salad bowl. Mix dijon mustard with hoisin sauce in a small sauser. Then thin the mixture with lemon juice and vinegar. When dressing is done, sprinkle sesame and mix. Serve at once.

Using chipotle oil and wasabi peas in a salad

By sheer chance, I found a chipotle bread dip made of canola oil, soybean oil, balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, chili essence, dried rosemary, paprika essence, and chipotle essence. As a blended condiment, it's clear and dark. Its composition of flavor is rich, first with a distinctive chipotle aroma and spiciness, then the noticeable but not to stringent acidity of vinegars, and finally a thick and subtle aroma of herbs and spices.  Since I don't eat much bread, I have been using it as marinate, salad oil, cooking oil, whatever else I could think of. I find it particularly interesting with salads. One day, I tried it out with a snack of wasabi-coated green peas. The wasabi flavor and the crunch of the peas added a new dimension of excitement to the celery salad. By the way, I liked to eat the leaves of the celery because of its flavor.

Recipe: Salad with chopotle oil and wasabi peas (for 2)

Ingredients: 

- leaves and the yellow stems of one stalk of celery, carefully washed and chopped

- 2 large leaves of purple cabbage, chopped

- 1/4 cup wasabi coated green peas snack

- 3 tablespoons (TB) cashew pieces

- 2 TB chipotle bread dip

Procedure:

Toss the chopped vegetables in 3 TB of well-shaken chipotle bread dip. Since the bread dip is a thick oil, only a small amount of it is needed. When the vegetables are well coated with the dip, mix in the peas and the cashews. Serve right away, else the crispy coat of the peas will be lost.