Salads recap

I thought doing a post on salad should be a fun twist on a common New Year’s Resolution, losing weight. Instead of the focus being “to lose weight,” it could be to eat more salad or more vegetables. The challenge was looking for salads that use cold-weather vegetables or grains.

Generally, my go-to dish in the wintertime is roasted brussels sprouts with a little bit of salt and lemon. That’s it — very simple. Roasted brussels sprouts are definitely not a salad because it’s not a medley of vegetables. I wanted to try other winter vegetable side dishes and this is what I found:

Beet and couscous salad

For many years I’ve enjoyed going to Lemonade for lunch because I get to see what salad and grains could be: colorful, flavorful, and and nice to look at. I tend to resist beets. Whenever I think of beets, I immediately think dirt. But as always, I eat with an open mind. It was pleasant to eat and it did not taste like dirt.

Brussels sprouts, dates & parmesan salad

I saw this at Lemonade. It sounded so weird. But again, I approach all food with an open mind. I would attempt to replicate this. The dates are the star of the salad as it balances the salty parmesan and bitter brussels sprouts.

Bionicos (also known as Mexican fruit salad)

There is this fruit truck in front of the hospital where they serve fresh-cut fruit. It curbs my sweet tooth. The crema slathered on top is a mix of yogurt, sweetened condensed milk, and Mexican crema. The fruits in the salad are apples, strawberries, yogurt, and banana topped with granola.

I did make a couple of warms salads using lentils since we have so many lentils in our pantry. The first salad on the left is lentils and carrot salad from the NY Times. Usually, around this time I have a lot of carrots in the fridge because I like to have it on-hand for mirepoix or for potato salad. The salad on the right is a lentil and bulgur salad which is again from NY Times. This was a good excuse for me to buy bulgur — plus I get to finally make my own tabouli. I loved the dressing for the recipe, it was a nice bright lemon. Also note, there was no feta in the original recipe. I just happened to have some feta in my fridge and I threw it in.