All posts filed under: Salads

Green Apple and Cucumber Salad – Whole 30 Compliant

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This recipe is an adaptation of Geoffrey Zakarian’s Smashed Cucumber and Green Apple Salad.Geoffrey is a co-host on The Kitchen on Food Network on Saturday mornings, as well as being an Iron Chef.   Recently he prepared a pesto-rubbed baked salmon along with his Smashed Cucumber and Green Apple Salad.  The salad looked really good and appeared to be Whole30 Compliant, so I made a batch of it the same day.  I ended up taking this salad as a side dish for lunch several times the following week and some days I added cut up chicken and made it an entrée portion instead. Frankly, I was surprised 

Grilled stone peaches over mache greens with creamy lime dressing

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I moved from Northern California to the Northwest about 25 years ago, and took with me an established peach tree that had sentimental value.  My gardener dug up the tree for me, but said it wouldn’t live by the time the movers set it on their truck……but it did.  The movers swore up and down that it would not survive the long cold trip to Seattle in late October……but it did.  The tree had to be planted at our rental house and then dug up again the following July and replanted by the landscaper at our new home who said the tree had suffered enough and it was practically dead – and why couldn’t we see that?  I asked him to humor me and plant it anyways, which he did all the while grumbling under his breath “this won’t survive” ……but it did.   That little peach tree did nothing the first two years – not a single peach (barely had leaves much less fruit.)   But in the spring of the third year, it blossomed.  And in the fourth year it actually produced a few …

Lo Carb Taco Salad

Taco Salad the Lo-Carb Way

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Am back on a Lo-Carb diet for the next few weeks but can’t bear to eat the same food every day (roasted chicken, steak, burgers, etc.)   So last night I made Taco Salad, which took less than 15 minutes to prep and cook – then brought left-overs for lunch today in a portable bento box. No, you won’t find a deep-fried taco shell or even tortilla chips hidden somewhere underneath, as they would take the carb count way beyond what I use in a day (which is 25 carbs or less). This recipe is very simple and quick to prepare; has an abundance of flavor, and I found I didn’t really miss having a taco shell after all.

Old Fashioned Macaroni Salad

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  Did you know that May is National Salad Month?   I didn’t, but I did know that when we have sunny weather like we did this weekend, I crave salads.  On Sunday the temperature reached 86 degrees in Seattle and it seemed fitting to fire up the BBQ, grill a burger, and serve Macaroni Salad, along with a beer.    Growing up in the Bay Area we had family and friends over just about every weekend to enjoy the pool and sun – to make the macaroni salad a little fancier, my Mom would add Bay Shrimp on top (about 1/4 cup).  It definitely made it more special – here is my Mom’s recipe.

Orange Salad with Kalamata Olives, Artichoke Hearts and Raspberries

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I want to start off the week with some healthy menus, so looking to salads for lunchtime meals.  I actually don’t like a lot of lettuce in salads, rather use it as the foundation to pile on lots of fresh fruit and vegetables.  The following salad has a nice citrus background, some salty briny flavors with the Kalamata olives, sweetness from the raspberries, and healthy benefits from the artichoke hearts (high in potassium, folic acid and Vitamin C). Because the Kalamata are brined, they contain sodium – so I don’t add any salt to the salad.  I ate a portion of this salad along

Beet salad w Orange

Roasted Beet Salad with Mandarin Oranges and Mascarpone Cheese

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Beets and mandarin oranges are plentiful in my local grocery store, as both are in season.  I recently had a delicious beet salad with mandarin oranges at the Trellis Restaurant in Kirkland.  Then last week I had a great beet salad with mascarpone (no mandarins) at Tulio in Seattle.  I liked both salads very much and decided to combine the flavors from both salads and came up with what you see here.  This is about as easy a salad as you can get other than stopping at your local salad bar (which I am never in favor of).  You do have to roast the beets, but it is quite easy,

Watermelon and feta cheese salad

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I remember the first time I had this salad, which was in Athens quite a few years ago. My sister Lorie and I had traveled to Greece, where we made Athens our home port while we explored Mykonos, Corinth, Delphi,  Santorini and other cities and islands in Greece, before heading to Cairo to see the Sphinx and Pyramids of Giza.  This was a major trip for us traveling over 6,800 miles from home.  And then there was the Six Degrees of Separation thing, only we didn’t know

San Francisco-style Potato Salad – Updated

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UPDATED Recipe Am doing an update to the San Francisco-style Potato Salad (aka Herman’s Potato Salad) blog as I followed the suggestions of Paul Rogers, who commented on my original blog (see comment June 27th).    He remembers Herman adding thin slices of radish to it – I was quite skeptical on this as I don’t remember any type of crunch when I ate the potato salad and he didn’t say I was to cook the radishes.  I bought radishes, peeled and tried to slice them – too small to handle so I decided to grate the radishes (I used 9 radishes to 2 pounds of potato).  Also, he mentioned slicing the potatoes same as for scalloped potatoes (this was familiar the minute I read it).  Well, I have to say the salad now looks identical to Herman’s and I think the radishes brought the flavor as close as I can possibly get to the original recipe (the radish idea is likely the clincher for me).  I am happy with the recipe and hope you will be too, just in time for July 4th picnics.  …

San Francisco-style Potato Salad (aka Herman’s Potato Salad)

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Herman’s Delicatessen on Geary Street in San Francisco featured what I, and many of the locals, considered to be the world’s best potato salad.   It was a basic recipe of potatoes, carrots, mayo (Best Foods of course), parsley and vinegar.  It had a silky consistency to it, very thin slices of potato, and was very white in color, as it did not contain any mustard or eggs.  No celery, no onions, no pickles, no pickle juice either.