Salads | Be Nutritious

Orzo Greek Salad with Chickpeas

How I love salads, I cannot even explain. Perhaps I’ll try by telling you that even after eating out in many fancy restaurants, Sweet Tomatoes with its giant salad bar is still one of my favorites. Definitely in my top 5 favorite restaurants of all times. Salad bar is all I need to make me happy. Nothing more is required and nothing compares to a healthy and clean taste of fresh vegetables mixed with a tasty dressing.

This recipe is my take on a Greek salad but instead of preparing it with lettuce I used orzo pasta and chickpeas. That trick makes it more filling so you can have it as a main dish for lunch or you can take it with you to school or work for lunch break.

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Homemade ‘Salad Bar’

Yesterday I acquired new, very useful kitchen gadget, Kitchenaid Ceramic 6″ Chef’s Knife – White. It’s very sharp and according to a producer, it should never require sharpening because it doesn’t get blunt like regular steel knifes. That’s fantastic because I can never properly sharpen my knives. Interesting thing is that it doesn’t even feel sharp but once you’ll start cutting, you’ll notice how sharp it is.

Obviously I wouldn’t be myself if I haven’t tried it out right away so once I came home I put it to work. I chopped tons of different veggies for my super filling, main dish salad. In general I do not like giving recipes for that type of salads because most of a time I just throw whatever I have in the fridge at the moment. It’s kind of like when you go to a salad bar and top your salad with anything that looks yummy so there is no recipe required. However my salad was so tasty and fresh that, I decided to share it.

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Lentil Salad with Lime Cilantro Dressing

Lately I haven’t been cooking very much. We’ve been gong through some changes (read moving) and cooking definitely wasn’t on the top of my priorities. Also soon I am going home to visit my family in Poland. It will be a long visit, almost 2 months so you can expect me to be cooking a lot more often and it’s very likely that I will be focusing on regional cuisine. I hope together with my mommy and daddy, we will prepare some amazing Eastern European specialties. I can’t wait, I’m going to have a wonderful time

If you ever noticed, I often cook dishes from different parts of the world but what I actually like the most is to adjust my food habits to season and the region. Since I’m still in Miami my cooking is also very Miami like, cilantro, avocado and lime, ingredients that are ubiquitous in any tropical and sub tropical region. In addition to exotic flavors I often eat cold food in here. Most of the year it is so hot and humid that salads are just a perfect dish and if you’ll make salad with grains or beans it becomes a satisfying one course meal. I absolutely adore lentils so I used them in a salad recipe. Why not? Who said that lentils are good only in a soup or with a rice! They’re also great served cold. I used French lentils which are fabulous for salads because they hold their shape after cooking but if you can’t find them in your supermarket, use just regular brown lentils.

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Quinoa with Roasted Peppers and Onions

Roasted peppers have been one of my favorite things to eat ever since I remember. I think it’s absolutely amazing how the flavor of peppers changes from raw state to roasted. It becomes completely different vegetable. I was never fond of raw peppers but sauteing and even more roasting, changes their flavor and texture into a tender, heavenly deliciousness that melts in your mouth. In my home we never used to buy these popular roasted peppers in a jar. My parents always used to make their own, with a garlic clove which is a fabulously matching component for roasted peppers. We would simply eat them on a rustic bread or in a salad, and the flavored olive oil from roasted peppers was perfect to use in salad dressings.

I love using roasted peppers in my recipes. They add so much flavor, like in the similar recipe I made some time ago for orzo with roasted peppers and arugula. Today I made my salad with quinoa, because quinoa is excellent in grain salads but it can be easily substituted for rice or any small pasta type.

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Back to School, Peanut Butter Pasta Salad

I bet most of the people never even thought about combining peanut butter with macaroni. I also never did until one day while shopping in Whole Foods I saw peanut butter pasta noodles in their deli section. My first thought was: ‘Omg did I just saw pasta with peanut butter? How cool is that!’ I didn’t buy it and didn’t try it over there because I had other food waiting for me at home but I left the store with peanut butter in my bag and new recipe idea in my head. Oh how I love tasting new things. Of course I tasted peanut butter before, dah, who didn’t, but it was a surprise for me to see it in a savory dish other than peanut butter dipping sauce or dressing.

I would also say that it might be a perfect dish for a kid lunch. First of all, show me a kid that doesn’t like peanut butter? Two, since the dish is cold, there is no problem to pack it into lunchbox. And it’s so convenient, you can prepare it a day ahead and then sleep 10 minutes longer in the morning because you know that you don’t have to wake up early to prepare school lunch anymore. Plus you kid is going to love you, no more boring sandwiches.

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Quinoa Salad

Quinoa is a very unusual grain. It actually is a seed, not a grain but since it looks like one and is eaten in the same way, it is considered grain. It comes from South America and used to be one of the main foods of Incas. In the past few years it gained a lot of fame among healthy conscious people because it’s gluten free and has a surprisingly high protein content for a grain. Vegetarians, vegans and gluten allergic people often consider it one of the staple foods in their diet.

My adventure with quinoa started pretty unsatisfactory. I was so excited to finally try it, I always am excited when trying new things, but then when I put my first bite of quinoa into my mouth, I almost spit it out. I took another bite and unfortunately my senses did not deceive me, it was extremely bitter. I had to throw it away to trash and started wondering what’s the big deal with quinoa? It’s awful, how can so many people love it? So I googled ‘why quinoa tastes bitter’ and found my answer. All I had to do was to rinse it under cold running water for a minute or so to get rid of all the bitter taste. Oh how silly, that’s what happens if you try new things but don’t read how to prepare them. I made more quinoa right after and this time my experience was very pleasant. It tasted a bit nutty and all the bitter flavor was gone. Some producers of quinoa rinse it before packaging so there’s no worry that one will have such an unsuccessful beginning with quinoa like me.

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Arame Edamame Cucumber Salad

I love salads, especially during summer. It feels like they cool down your body somehow and they taste so fresh. I went today to my favorite veggie store and got myself some yummy edamame and cucumbers. I’ve had some arame at my home and I didn’t really know what to do with it, so with all those ingredients I decided to make some Asian inspired salad. Arame and in general all sea vegetables contain 10 times as much minerals as regular vegetables. You need just a little bit of them to get as much iron, magnesium, calcium and iodine as land vegetables provide. Actually they provide way more iodine than any other ingredient I know. Moreover they have some anticancer properties so adding sea vegetables to your meals every now and then is quite a good idea. Also arame is mild flavored so it would be a great beginning to those that are just starting to eat sea vegetables.

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Orzo Salad with Roasted Peppers

Have you ever wondered how do they make orzo? That must be extremely long and tough process to cut out all these tiny grains. And imagine how many of these grains need to be cut out, hundreds at least. I was very curious so I googled it. I found only one page that talks how to prepare orzo from scratch, it’s actually a blog ‘Having Fun in the Kitchen!’ Big props to the person doing it, that must have been hard work but also a lot of satisfaction. I didn’t make my own orzo, I’m way too lazy to ever do anything like that but nevertheless the result was fantastic. Roasted pepper, garlic, arugula and orzo are a perfect combination. Yum I want more!

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Salad with Perfect Honey Mustard

I’m a type of the person that never buys ready salad dressing. Most of them taste disgusting. I only tried few that I liked and they actually weren’t from any commercial brand found in supermarket but freshly made in my local grocery store. So I keep making my own dressings, they’re so much better and after many trials and errors I mastered a perfect recipe for honey mustard.

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Greek Salad

What could be a better way to celebrate beautiful, sunny summer day than spending time outdoors eating food straight from your garden. Well maybe not exactly form your garden, rather from farmers market but that’s alright too. As long as it’s fresh and healthy. Greek salad combines everything the best that summer has to offer, tasty cucumbers, crispy lettuce, sweet tomatoes, healthy olive oil…….yum.

Ingredients (serves 2):

4 cups of Romaine lettuce
1 cup cherry tomatoes halved
1 cup cucumber cut into pieces
1/2 cup red onion cut finely
1/2 cup black olives
3 oz feta cheese (crumbled or cubed)

For the dressing:

1 tsp dried herbs like oregano, marjoram, thyme, basil
1 garlic clove
1/2 shallot
2 Tbsp white or red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp water
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp sugar
Pinch of salt and pepper

Cut the lettuce into pieces and combine with the rest of the ingredients. Blend all the ingredients of the dressing. Adjust taste according to your preferences by adding more sugar, salt, pepper or vinegar. Pour over salad and mix well.