Warm potato salad with Goat Cheese

This is another find from the Cooking Light message board. Let's see, potatoes, goat cheese, how can I not try this. I did the lower fat version with yogurt. It was good, but the yogurt was almost a little to much for the goat cheese. I might like the high fat version better. Anyways, this was good, and I might want to play around with it a bit more. An impressive side item. It is pictured here with green chile cheeseburgers...now THOSE were great!

My curry chicken salad

My curry chicken salad was based on a recipe from Cooking Light. It had a bunch of interesting stuff in it, like nuts, grapes, but I never had that stuff on hand. So, I just did a basic chicken salad and added curry powder to it. Not just any curry powder, but Penzey's hot curry powder. Curry can be a little wierd and overpowering, but the penzey's has a nice balance and the little bit of heat really adds something. So, here is my basic recipe:

~1 cup cooked chopped chicken
1 green onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1/3 cup grated carrots
1/2 cup plain yogurt
healthy pinch salt
a couple of shakes of Penzey's hot curry powder
- mix together and serve on sliced crossant

Green Bean and Sweet Red Pepper Salad

Ok, it's a bit hard to make these lettuce salads look different. I guess I could have worked on my presentation a bit. This one comes from the same book, Around the World in 450 Recipes. It was a nice, fresh tasting salad and I added a bit of the leftover crockpot chicken from the night before to make it a little more substantial. A couple of things I did, was to leave out the pickled serrano and I roasted and skinned my red peppers before adding them to the salad. Also, I was making salad for only two so I cut down on the amount of dressing but still used the proportionate amounts 3:1 oil to vinegar. Make sure you season it well with salt and pepper.

12 oz. cooked green beans
2 red bell peppers, seeded and chopped
2 spring onions, (white and green parts) chopped
1 or more drained pickled serrano chilies, well rinsed,seeded and chopped
1 iceberg lettuce, coarsely shredded
olives for garnish

For the dressing:
3 T. red wine vinegar
9 T. olive oil
salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste

Turkish Salad

Ok, I'm making a last ditch effort this week to try out a few more salads ... so stay tuned. This one comes from a cookbook I received as a gift over the holidays, Around the World in 450 Recipes. I threw some boneless, skinless chicken thighs in the crockpot and let them cook all day so we could have the salad with shredded chicken. It was an outstanding salad and very much like the Turkish Salads I would get in Berlin ... the baked chicken made it a little more substantial.

Turkish Salad
1 cos lettuce heart (butter lettuce)
1 green bell pepper
1 red bell pepper
1/2 cucumber
4 tomatoes
1 red onion
8 oz. feta cheese, crumbled
black olives, to garnish

For the dressing:
3 T. olive oil
3 T. lemon juice
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 T. chopped fresh parsley
1 T. chopped fresh mint
salt and pepper, to taste

Really you don't need any instruction ... prep the salad veggies and wisk the dressing ingredients and toss. I bashed the garlic clove and let it just steep in the dressing for about 30 minutes and then removed it before tossing with the salad so it wouldn't be overpowered by garlic.

Spinach Salad with Spiced Pork and Ginger Dressing

I found this recipe in one of last year's Cooking Light. The pork turned out very well: tender, a little spicy, but not to hot. For the dressing, I just used leftover dressing from the crunchy romaine and added some ginger to it. I wish I had the salad vegtables that was in the original recipe, but I just used what I had on hand. I topped mine with with fried won tons.

Papa's salad

I love my dad. He is so random. I get 2 emails from my dad with all these pictures of salad. No explanation, nothing, just pictures. So, I have deduced that it is the Thai Lime Beef Salad originally posted by Robin here and he wanted to me to put it on the blog. So, here it is!

Honey Lime Fruit Toss

Here is a link to the recipe for a great fruit salad. I first found it on the back of the label on a can of mandarin oranges. It's easy to make and my girls LOVE fruit!

http://www.dole.com/Recipes/Recipes_Detail.jsp?ID=181

Side Note: I had a hard time with this one. We eat salads, but they're not usually anything to write home about. We open a bag of salad greens and add our favorite toppings. I do have a suggestion for a good store bought dressing: Golding Farms Honey Mustard.

Curried couscous salad

This recipe was from one of the healthy food episodes by Rachel Ray. This is a great salad. It has a little bit of everything and everything really goes together. I have made and brought it for potlucks and even though it is borderline wierd, most people seem to like it. I really though I had really put my take on it, but after reading the recipe this last time around, nope, pretty much straight from the book. I use a clementine instead of an orange. Picture below is the salad with tandori chicken:



Ok, having technical difficulties in finding the recipe...will update later.

Curried Chicken Salad

I submit to you a recipe that not only fits this month's criteria, but also last month's because I finally had time to watch it off the tivo. This was excellent. I think it was great the first day and even better after that. It held together surprisingly well. I didn't use the nuts, because I thought those would get soggy. I ate it on a sandwich, a bed of spinach, and all by itself straight from the bowl. I did not "dress" the lettuce like it instructed, but I still thought it was fantastic. I would definitely make this again.

Curried Chicken Salad

Chicken Salad

We had some leftover cooked, shredded chicken from the Taco Salad earlier this week and decided to expand on our current chicken salad recipe. Usually we just put in some mayo and mustard, salt and pepper and call it a day...That is also our egg salad recipe. This recipe was great. I 1/4th-ed it because we had only 1 cup of chicken and it was fine. I liked that I had all the ingredients on hand. I will definitely revisit it, but only to wing it...no recipe in the future:)

The kids were having mac-n-cheese, so we had a little:) It was spiderman mac-n-cheese...

Rice Noodle Salad

There is a whole lot of everything going on in this salad ... citrus, roasted peanuts, herbs, etc. but it all seems to work somehow ... a classic Thai noodle salad where all the flavors seem to blend when you put them together. The best part is that I got to use my very own homegrown grapefruit from the tree in our backyard AND aside from the natural fat in peanuts there is nearly no extra fat. This is from Bittman's book, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, and the official title is Jean-Georges's Rice Noodle Salad with Grapefruit and Peanuts.

1 or 2 small fresh chiles, minced, or about 1 t. hot red pepper flakes
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1 T. packed brown sugar
1/4 c. freshly squeezed lime juice
2 T. soy sauce
8 oz. rice vermicelli
1 stalk lemongrass
1 large grapefruit, peeled, sectioned, and chopped
1/2 c. roasted peanuts
1 medium ripe tomato, chopped
3 scallions, chopped
1/3 c. coarsely chopped fresh mint leaves
1/2 c. coarsely chopped cilantro leaves

In a small bowl, combine chiles, garlic, sugar, lime juice, and soy sauce. Taste and adjust seasoning. (This dressing can be made a day or two in advance).

Soak rice noodles in fairly hot water for 10-20 min. Meanwhile, set a large pot of water to boil. Trim the stalk of the lemongrass and peel off enough layers to expose the tender core. Finely mince enough to make 1 T.

Mix grapefruit, 1/3 c. peanuts, tomato, scallions, mint, 1/3 c. cilantro, and lemongrass together in a large bowl.

Drain noodles and plunge into boiling water. When water returns to a boil, drain noodles and rinse in a colander with cold water. Drain well, then toss in the large bowl with the grapefruit mixture and dressing.

Divide up the salad and top with remaining cilantro and peanuts.

Black Bean-Taco Salad with Lime Vinaigrette

I got this out of Kerri's Greatest Hits. I also found the recipe on Cooking Light.com. We liked it pretty well, but I think that we are dressing people. We would have liked more dressing. The Lime Vinaigrette was delicious, but I think that I poured it all on the chicken and there wasn't enough for the lettuce.

Egg Salad

After the last recipe, I am almost embarrassed to post this.



I had somehow ended up with a ton of eggs in my fridge to use up, and decided to make an egg salad for lunch this weekend. I think I have mentioned before that I was never a fan of these salads before because I don't like mayonaise. I still am not a fan, but with many of these recipes, I just sub yogurt or sour cream. This recipe interested me because it was similar to a chicken salad I make. I baked the eggs using the Alton Brown hard cooked eggs method (bake eggs at 325 for 30 minutes) and then made this salad for lunch. It was ok. As Mark said, "I prefer your chicken salad" and I think the fact that it was close, but not quite was a little annoying. I wish I would have tried some different herbs like dill, or maybe added some mustard. Oh well, some other time. Hopefully I will get around to making my chicken salad before this month is over.

Warm Nut Encrusted Goat Cheese Salad with Bacon Lardons

I was so proud of this salad! It was GREAT and it truly reminded me of a salad my mom and I split at a fancy restaurant one time. I feel like I really recreated it. The recipe comes from Emeril and I did not add the bacon. My husband did not use the dressing I made. He still enjoyed the croutons and goat cheese with his blue cheese dressing. I would definitely make this again...especially for my mom the next time she is in town.




The goat cheese patties are great because you just bake them for 5-10 minutes. I did not read carefully enough and did not use toasted walnut, but it was still tasty!

Crunchy Romaine

My aunt gave me this recipe and I think I had made it once before, but this was the first time in a long time. My mom and sister actually made this over the holidays. I am going to give the recipe as I made it because it ended up not like the original at all.

Topping:
1 pkg ramen noodles with no flavor packet, crushed
handful of pecans, chopped
2T butter
- Saute ramen noodles and pecans in butter until toasted. Cool
- *can freeze forever

Dressing:
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tsp sesame oil
3 TB rice wine vinegar
3 TB white wine vinegar
1 TB honey
1 T soy sauce
- put in jar with lid and shake well

Salad:
Torn romaine (BITE SIZE!)
thinly sliced radishes
grated carrots
chopped green onions
2 tsp dressing
2 TB topping

Tomatoes with Blue Chese

So...I didn't really make this like I was suppose to. I used a few tomatoes, carrots, and feta. I followed the dressing recipe exactly and it turned out well. B said it tasted similar to Caesar salad but sweet. The ingredients are basically the same, but with 2 tbsp sugar. Wonder why I was drawn to this recipe. Of course I found it on food network because it had 27 reviews...5 stars as always.

This is the "before the dressing " picture because it looked so nice.
And After...

Chinese Chicken Salad with Red Chile Peanut Dressing

I choose to make this recipe because it had 5 stars and 90 reviews. B and I really enjoyed it. There was very little left after I adjusted the recipe for 2 people. I also got one of those chickens you see at the grocery store that are already cooked for the 2 cups shredded chicken because I had having to cook and THEN shred chicken!!

But, yes, this was great! I didn't include snow peas...

C insisted that I take a picture of his plate also. He had chicken, strawberries, and a pea/corn medley. He did not enjoy this... :(

Balsalmic Chicken and Spinach Salad

Rachel Ray has the best salads. I do a version of this recipe that Mark just loves (I told you he loves salads). Salads are my new favorite easy dinner. I can prep all the ingredients during nap time during the day, and then just throw it together right before dinner after getting home from a play date, class, whatever. Note: I don't necessarily eat salads to lose weight, I like to eat them because I get lots of fresh veggies into my diet. This particular recipe is pretty high in fat. My version isn't so bad, but I think you have to have a little fat in order to be satisfying, am I right?

January Challenge - Ooooo, Saaaalads!

I was going to do soups and stews, but I consulted my husband, who hates soups and stews and prefered salads. I wanted to do this one in the summer, but perhaps with the new year and everyone trying to eat better, this would be a good time to do a salad challenge. All salads are eligible: meal, meat, side, potato, fruit, etc. DH does love a good salad!