Salad Saturday

Tags

color, cooking, green, healthy, salad

My family had planned on a potluck picnic for Easter Sunday, but ended up opting for going out for pizza instead. No complaints here. I had, however, been pondering the ingredients in my kitchen for salad making potential and even after I found out the picnic was off decided to go ahead with the preparations.

Salads are my specialty. My first foray was when my officemates at the newspaper where I worked decided to have a potluck lunch. I had zero cooking skills at that time, but had a bit of experience making salads from when I was growing up. I went to the store and picked out all of the most colorful ingredients I could think of. That salad probably cost $30 to make. When you don’t cook and have to buy every single ingredient, making anything is expensive. The salad was a huge success though and now nine years later, salads are still my favorite thing to make.

When I got started on Saturday I wasn’t sure what combination would go into each salad but just started pairing things up and soon it all came together. When I say “soon” I don’t really mean soon. I had this naive notion that whipping up a few salads would take 30 or 40 minutes. Let’s just say my kitchen was full of sunshine when I started and it was pitch black outside when I finished. I had so many projects I wanted to tackle Saturday afternoon, but sometimes it is really nice to just roll with something that feels good. Cooking, for me, is usually a hurried experience because I’m short on time and starving. Leisurely cooking is quite luxurious.

Ever the optimist, I wrote down the ingredients for each salad as I went along in hopes that I might want to duplicate it someday. Lucky for you and me alike! I don’t really ever measure ingredients, this is all according to taste so if you give any of these a whirl just go with what feels right to you and your taste buds.

Pasta Salad
Penne Pasta
Small Red Beans
Cannellini Beans
Yellow Pepper
Tomato
Red Onion
Lemon Garlic Herb Salad Dressing
Balsamic Vinegar

Purple Slaw
Purple Cabbage
Purple Onion
Dulse Flakes (seaweed)
Black Pepper
Sesame Oil
Brown Rice Vinegar
*Sriracha Chili Sauce

*I added this later – it didn’t have quite enough flavor and needed a little bit of kick.

Cucumber Salad
Cucumber
Tomato
Red Pepper
Purple Onion
Radishes
Green Olives
Balsamic Vinegar
Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Green Bean Salad
(this one was my favorite)
Green Beans
Red Pepper
Dianna Peppers
Calamata Olives
Purple Onion
Black Pepper
Ume Plum Vinegar
Extra Virgin Olive Oil

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