Salads – Page 4 – Rosemary and the Goat

Almond Slaw with Edamame

Crunchy vegetables and nuts, how easy is that.

Have you made any New Years resolutions yet? or I guess the question is DID you make any New Year’s resolutions and have you broken them yet?

Guess I could resolve not to go to so many movies a week, but why would I do that, I’m over 60 so why not go as often as I want (at least twice a week) until I run out of movies to watch. I could resolve to exercise more but I have to start doing that anyway because my sciatica problem is into its fifth month so why not try a little more moving around to see if it will get better.

I have not really made any other promises to myself than to try and simplify our meal times a little. I don’t mean make easy recipes with 2 or 3 ingredients; but I think I would like to start trying to make some kind of meat dish, or fish or chicken, probably on the grill since I won’t have to do that and make one side dish to go along with the main dish. How easy would dinner be every night if I were to simply make meat and a salad of some sort or throw a vegetable on the grill with the meat.

January 26, 2017 By Sherry

Salads

Brussel Sprout Salad with Pumpkin Seeds and Cranberries

A beautiful Christmas salad to go with just about anything.

A few weekends ago I was looking for a side dish to go with some burgers we were doing one night when my daughter came for the weekend. What started off as a sautéed Brussels with cranberries and pumpkin seeds and parmesan cheese turned into a crunchy salad with a citrus vinaigrette.

At first this salad was going to have pistachios in it because I had a bag full in my freezer then I thought pumpkin seeds sounds so much fitting for this time of the year and go great with cranberries.

Brussels sprouts are a little bitter I think and the addition of the dried cranberries and the citrus dressing balance the flavors perfectly. I tweaked the dressing after making it the first time because I thought it needed a little garlic and some Dijon mustard.

If you don’t care for the cranberries, try adding some dried figs and I loved adding the shaved parmesan cheese as a garnish.

December 19, 2016 By Sherry

Entree/ Salads

Asian Ramen Crusted Chicken Salad

Ramen noodles not just for soup.

With one major holiday behind us and another one speeding toward us like an out of control train, who’s not looking for some easy to make. I’m spending most of my time online shopping (as usual) and last night during cyber Monday I was up clicking away at the last minute at 11:00.

I use to buy Ramen noodles by the case when I catered because one of my favorite salads “Crunchy Romaine Toss” (aka Emerald Green Salad) used these as a topping. Toasted in butter either in a skillet or in the oven they add a buttery taste to any salad or even a pretty good snack.

I came across this recipe in Southern Living magazine and the had the chicken one side of the plate and the salad on the other. I added several ingredients to the salad and decided I wanted my chicken chopped up on top of the salad. One thing that I did not do enough was to crush the Ramen noodles. SL recipe said to put it in a food processor; that’s the best way to get a fine crush. I put mine in a plastic bag and beat it to death; but they did not get smallenough.

December 1, 2016 By Sherry

Salads

Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad with Avocado

Another twist on a favorite.

In high school we had a favorite place to go for lunch, or I should say two places, one was Knox’s (great burgers, no longer there) and the other was the Round House. Yeah, the restaurant was/is round. My sister and I loved their “combination salad” which consisted of head lettuce, tomato, boiled egg with cottage cheese and covered with a French dressing that was so good I still make that salad for my husband and myself.

I haven’t met anyone that has ever eaten cottage cheese and boiled egg on a salad and it has to be head lettuce and I do buy a bottled French dressing and doctor it up a little with some paprika, lemon juice and a dash of Worcestershire sauce.

I don’t know about you but I could eat salad every night as the main course and I have posted quit a few here that can stand on their own as a main dish; others could have some protein added to them and you have a filling dinner salad.

October 15, 2016 By Sherry

Salads

Crunchy Asian Salad with Peanut Dressing

Good with chicken too!

Have you had a big reunion yet for either high school or college? My 50th high school union was last year and this year was my husband’s (yes, I have to admit I was a cougar even before that was even a word referring to marrying a younger man; he’s only 9 months younger though.) and I have to say it was so much fun seeing everyone. Our high school, (in Caruthersville ) back then may have had 500 students total, so it was easy to know just about everyone in the whole school.

I knew almost everyone that walked through the door at the brunch that one of his classmates had at her house (thanks Geneva). How time flies; everyone looked the same, just a little older, grayer and a few more wrinkles than we had in high school. One friend, asked my sister and I if we remember one night after a football game that we were racing one of my husband’s friends when we were going home (my sister was driving I’m sure) and we went air bound off the road and landed in a field. How could we ever forget that; we probably (maybe) never raced anyone again. No one was hurt, just a little shook up. We did a lot of crazy things back then that I’m sure even our kids never heard about.

Before attending the reunion, we drove to Chicago to see our son and his family. We are always cooking up some new recipe and my daughter-in-law, Missy found this recipe on Pinterest. Grandsons Oliver and Charlie helped me make Oreo ice cream twice and their mom made three salads she had found on Pinterest; this was one of them. I liked it so much I decided to post it to the blog incase you didn’t see it on Pinterest.

October 5, 2016 By Sherry

Salads

Baby Romaine with Peaches and Bacon

Baby, Baby, Baby Romaine.

On a trip to Savannah back in the spring we tasted some wonderful southern food. I made a list of several I wanted to try and recreate and I’ve already attempted a few of them successfully.

My twin, Terry, and Pauletta and Judy (high school friends) had a great time sampling some of the local cuisine. We had so many different things to choose from that it was a challenge every meal for me to make up my mine on what to order.

Belford’s Grill was our last place to eat before catching a ride to the airport and it was so hard making a decision on what to try; my choice ended up being their Fried Green Tomato Stack. But, before handing over the menu I copied down some things that really looked interesting.

Have you ever seen baby iceberg lettuce? Belford’s had a baby iceberg wedge salad on their menu and it looked so cute. So, one day I had it in my head I was going to make this salad of iceberg lettuce, fresh “southern” peaches, bacon, blue cheese and buttermilk dressing.

The first challenge was finding baby iceberg lettuce. No one had it, not even Whole Foods. Not only did they not have it, they had never heard of it. What I did find at my HEB was baby romaine lettuce. So cute, two little heads about 5″ long in each carton. I cut the heads in half and each half was enough for one salad. My second challenge was finding good peaches; couldn’t so I used nectarines.

September 15, 2016 By Sherry

Garnish/ Salads/ Side dish/ Vegetables

Pickled Yellow Squash

Take advantage of your summer harvest.

I’ve been doing a lot of pickling lately; first my roasted yellow pickled beets and now this pickled yellow squash.

Even if you don’t have a garden you can take advantage of finding great deals on produce and then canning some to enjoy in the winter. I didn’t find a great deal at the farmer’s market; their yellow squash was $3.00/lb. I bought one pound of their squash and then went to my HEB and bought 6 lbs. at $.99/lb. Now that’s a deal.

My mother and dad both use to can things. It seemed like it was more my mother canning tomatoes and pickles from my dad’s garden and then after my dad retired they both tried their hand(s) at pickled okra, beets. When they moved over to Reelfoot Lake he even canned some fish he had caught then they would make fish cakes out of the canned fish. Now, I wasn’t too keen on trying that recipe but I’m sure if he made it, it was good.

I’ve canned some marmalade before and some fig jam and even some cognac raisins to serve with cheese. Oh, I forgot, one of my sister’s (Terry) best canned items is her chow chow. It is better than any chow chow you will ever find in a grocery store and when I can get tomatoes for 50 cents a lb. I make some. I have to go to Missouri to get tomatoes at that price.

August 11, 2016 By Sherry

Salads

Tomato and Arugula Salad

All those fresh summer vegetables in one salad.

Don’t you just love the taste of arugula? The peppery taste is delicious mixed with tomatoes and I love it on sandwiches in place of lettuce or sautéed a little bit and put into an omelette.

This salad was another idea I had one night when faced with a refrigerator full of vegetables and a brand new package of arugula and after looking on the internet I found others had beaten me to the punch or should I say, recipe. I used Bobby Flay’s Vinaigrette recipe but my own farm truck list of ingredients for the salad.

There’s nothing better than summer tomatoes and over the 4th of July, my son Paul brought a ton (not actually a ton) of tomatoes to me; so many he made 6 pints of roasted salsa that we can enjoy through the summer. I’m thinking when my husband is in the pool and wants a snack I can go pop open a jar of salsa and serve it to him pool side with some chips (not homemade of course).

I’ve gotten where I only buy English cucumbers, that is unless I can get the small pickling type. I love the deep ridges in the English cucumbers and they don’t have as many seeds on the inside and they looked so pretty in this salad.

August 1, 2016 By Sherry

Salads

Salad LÜKE

Loved John Besh’s Salad Luke.

We tried our best to eat as much as we could on a recent trip to New Orleans; and as usual I found several things I wanted to try and make once returning home.

My sister and I both were in speech classes until about 4th grade because we couldn’t pronounce our “r’s” correctly and I’m always flubbing up on pronouncing certain words. One night in New Orleans we had dinner at Luke, one of John Besh’s restaurants. So, all day I’m thinking “now how is this pronounced”. Is it like Lu-kay, or lu-kee or luck. When we were seated that night, the first thing I ask the waiter is how to pronounce Luke and he said “Luke, I don’t know what the two dots are doing over the “U” “. At least I won’t be pronouncing this one wrong again.

Their Salad Luke was such a simple salad but the appeal to me was all in the presentation. The plate had a little puddle of buttermilk dressing, topped with some celery root, golden beets and shreds of carrots, then one leaf of butter lettuce sitting on the plate like a little bowl, then drizzle of dressing then 3 or 4 more stacks of the leaves/dressing, making the stack about 4-5” tall but only about 4 – 5 leaves of lettuce. Very pretty and impressed me enough I couldn’t wait to make my own pickled yellow beets and my own buttermilk dressing.

July 17, 2016 By Sherry

Salads/ Side dish

Pickled Roasted Golden Beets

Love these golden beets!

My husband has always said he doesn’t like beets because they are red and he doesn’t like red food. Now that doesn’t make sense since he does eat catsup, tomatoes, etc. So I decided to make golden beets to use in a salad similar to one I had at Luke’s Restaurant in New Orleans. That recipe will come in a couple of days.

Usually the beets I eat are pickled. For years, that was the only thing I knew to do with a beet. And, of course, they were red beets that I pickled and they bled all over everything and if I wasn’t careful I would end up with a blood-splattered looking top.

After I started this blog I became more adventurous in trying new recipes. I’ve always liked cooking but never really went out on a limb to try different things. Then I tried fried beets once at East Side Kings in Austin and I made them almost immediately after returning home. My French Fried Beets with Japanese Mayonnaise is one of my favorite appetizers; I now cut them in slices and not chunks like ESK make their’s. Then my next adventure in beets was with my Roasted Beet Napoleon; stacks of deliciousness. And, who could pass up my Pink Heart Egg Finger Sandwiches where I used the beet juice to dye my hard-boiled eggs then cut tiny beet hearts as a garnish for the egg sandwich.

July 12, 2016 By Sherry

Appetizers/ HotApp/ Salads/ Side dish

BLT Stacked Tomatoes

One of my favorite foods from Savannah.

Do you find it hard to pass up a fried green tomato? Well I do and while visiting in Savannah back in April I saw them on every menu I looked at along with shrimp and grits and pimento cheese .

I grew up eating fried green tomatoes. My dad had the best garden ever and “organic” before most people even though of growing anything without a lot of pesticides. He made his own garlic spray that he would spray on his plants for bugs and he even hooked up a pump in the lake they lived on (after retirement) and use that water to water his garden.

Over the years of our gardening we would grow all types of tomatoes and I could not wait to see the first green tomatoes get big enough to pick and fry and believe me it was hard to pick them knowing in just a few days we would have beautiful vine ripen tomatoes. But, that was never a hard decision for me to make — pick or not pick.

Have you ever had fried green tomatoes with pimento cheese on top? I haven’t either but saw it on some menus in Savannah. I have posted a Fried Green Tomato with Black Eyed Pea Vinaigrette and a Fried Green Tomato with Ravigote Sauce.

July 7, 2016 By Sherry

Salads

Pasta and Arugula Salad and Herb Dressing

What to do with these ingredients.

With all of these ingredients left over from the weekend I had an idea to use my pasta and arugula in a salad but didn’t know what type of dressing. So I “googled” and believe it or not there were a lot of people that had already beaten me to this salad idea. So I took Food and Wine’s recipe and added a couple of things.

Like I was saying in another post, I always buy too much food when my kids come home, in fact, when anyone comes over. A few weekends ago when my daughter came I had bought some cute pasta to use in a pasta salad and never got around to using it, I also had bought some frozen petite peas that I was going to use to make my pasta pesto saladthat I had made for our garden club luncheon last year. That was the easiest salad ever. But along with those two ingredients I had a whole box of baby arugula and some very pretty colored cherry tomatoes in orange, purple, red and yellow.

I have a weakness for “cute” pastas. This particular one was a trottole pasta (looks like spinning tops (that’s a toy if you didn’t know what a “top” was)) and who could resist Orechetti (little ears), or little O’s, ABC’s, coral shapes and I’ve even bought Maple leaf shaped pasta when we visited Canada, and of course I have bought Texas shaped pasta.

June 16, 2016 By Sherry

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