Zucchini Bowl for Salad

Give any salad a new look.

Ok, I’m sitting around with nothing better to do than think of a way to use a leftover zucchini and then I happened upon a recipe; not really a recipe but more of a presentation idea I saw in Catering Source magazine. (Seems like there is a theme going here of me sitting around with nothing to do — after doing water aerobics a couple of times a week, gym a couple of times a week, craft circle working on doll houses, laundry, shopping etc. etc. I still do have a lot of time left over to ponder unimportant things like a vessel for a salad.)

I would really like a do-over with the last 20 years. Not that I would change one thing about raising my kids or any other thing I have done but I would like to have more time to travel and take cooking classes. What I always loved about catering was, of course cooking the food, but most of all I loved watching others enjoy what I prepared. Maybe I would be a food-truck owner. I love that idea and if I haven’t said it before, one weekend I want to go to Austin and check out at least 4-5 food trucks and sample their foods until I can’t hold another bite. So far, I have only been to the Flip Happy Crepe Truck and had a delicious Nutella and banana crepe which I may try to make sometime soon.

So back to the salad. My salad this night was lettuce from our lettuce box (see picture below) a few of my French breakfast radishes I planted, a few green onions, some orange sections, baby cucumber and I whipped up a little vinaigrette; topped it with a nasturtium flower and used one of the nasturtium leaves as a base. The vase/bowl itself is made of two zucchini slices I sliced very thin with my mandoline and used a heart pick from Pickonus.com to hold it together. I think it is a very pretty salad container. If you haven’t looked at Pickonus website, take a look, they have some really cute picks that you will not find any place else.

Use a mandoline to slice your zucchini into thin strips. If you don’t have a mandolin a wide potato peeler may do the trick.

Use two zucchini strips per bowl.

Overlap the zucchini and fasten with a pick in the front and the back.  I rested my “bowl” on a nasturtium leaf from my garden. The nasturtium flower is also edible. My heart picks came from Pick On Us.

I love my lettuce box that my husband build. He’s now going to build me a radish box for my French breakfast radishes. The black trash can you see to the right of the box are potatoes he’s trying to grow.

So, bottom line is that you can use this little zucchini bowl for a green salad, maybe a chicken salad or even a seafood salad. I love the way the salad looks all perched up in this container.