The Salad Days

When it’s 110 degrees in the shade, I start to crave cold foods at every meal.  Things like salads and cold soups are much more appealing to me than steaks and stews at the peak of a Texas summer. Salads are often the worst thing on a restaurant menu so you should always make your own. It was this line of thinking that landed me in the middle of my local produce section yesterday, starving, and looking for salad ingredients that satisfied my intangible yen for a dinner that would be “crisp” and “refreshing.” 

I had broken my own rule – don’t get hungry. And certainly don’t go to the grocery store hungry. It will go one of two ways, both of them bad. Either you will wander for what seems like days haphazardly putting things into and taking things out of your basket as various whims overtake you, your frustration steadily growing until you finally decide nothing in the entire store is worth the calories, abandon your basket in the middle of the house-wears aisle (how did you end up there anyway?) and leave the store. Or you’ll load up as much junk food as you can carry and undo the whole day. Nobody wants that.  But everybody wants delicious salads in the summer time. So, go in with a plan. A salad plan. Here are two simple options – one cold, one warm - to get you started.

Strawberry-Chicken Salad (cold)

You will need:

A bag of spinach

A bunch of basil

A pint of strawberries

A bag of pre-cooked chicken strips or chunks

Wash and drain the spinach and put into bowls. Stack several basil leaves together and cut in half lengthwise, then chop with kitchen scissors directly on top of spinach. Slice strawberries into rounds. Add strawberries and chicken to each bowl. I add sea salt to mine, but if you’re avoiding sodium, don’t.

Shrimp, Goat Cheese & Walnut salad (warm)

You will need:

A bag of mixed field greens

3 oz. plain goat cheese

4 oz. bag crushed walnuts

Small bag pre-cooked small shrimp

2 pears

Butter substitute

Minced garlic

A lemon

Green onion

Put the greens into individual bowls and set aside. Add 2/3 of the goat cheese and ½ of the walnuts to a small food processor. Heat butter substitute and minced garlic in a sauté pan; add shrimp. Cube the pears. When the shrimp are piping hot, remove from heat and put on a plate, reserving as much liquid in the pan as possible. Add the pears to the sauté pan and warm till they’re soft, but not mushy. Add 2/3 of the softened pears to the shrimp plate and 1/3 to the small food processor, along with any liquid left in the pan. Add the juice of one lemon to food processor and pulverize to make salad dressing. Top the greens with the hot shrimp & pears – greens will wilt a bit.  Spoon dressing over each salad and then top with the remaining goat cheese, crumbled, and the remaining walnuts. Add raw green onion slices to the very top and serve warm.

It’s difficult to portion out calories and fat and all without exact quantities. My best advice is to look at what is in the entire container of goat cheese or walnuts or whatever, get a total for all of it and then divide by how many servings you make from it. Salad greens and fruit are free. Chicken has a shocking amount of sodium. Avoid animal products (meat, eggs, talons) to avoid cholesterol.  Mushroom slices are pretty good in the first salad if you don’t do chicken.

Drink water. Especially during the salad days.  If you don’t like the taste of plain water, a few slices of cucumber makes a glass of ice water very “crisp” and “refreshing.”