Monday, October 22, 2012

What do you eat? Greek salad edition!

I'm generally a follow-the-recipe kind of cook. Unlike my friend Dave, if I start throwing ingredients around, nothing good comes from it. So I stick to a script and everybody gets out alive. I made a minor tweak to a recipe today and it was a big success (in my humble opinion!) so I'm excited to write about it.

Tonight we had vegan greek salad: cucumbers (de-seeded, skin on), bell peppers, and tomatoes (de-seeded) all chopped into bite-size pieces (I like to be able to eat a salad with a spoon. Odd, I know. It does make it easy for the kids to eat, so there's that.) I like this kind of recipe because you can always add in whatever you like; tonight I added half a can of corn and some small-chopped romaine that were on their way out of this life. Traditional? No. Yummy? Yes.



I googled around for a greek salad dressing and found this one at All Recipes. Looked good, reviews were good. I made it as printed (scaled to 8 servings which I think the link will do for you), except for substituting an "all flavor" kind of herb for the onion powder (didn't have any), using 1/3 cup red wine vinegar, and adding 1 tbsp lemon juice from the jar. So the big tweak? I soaked about 1/3 cup of cashews for an hour or so before making the dressing, and threw those in the blender with the other ingredients. It came out creamy, thick, tangy, and delicious. I dressed it about a half hour before diner. It got pretty watered down once it was on the food, despite all the de-seeding, so I'd use it right before eating. still tasted good!



Served with bread and "butter" (Earth Balance). You can see Jack's dinner priorities in this pic:





In non-food news, I found out that I got my provisional Top Secret security clearance which means that I can work (secretary rover) whenever they have need of me. I'm up for a proper part-time position; pitted against my across-the-street neighbor Stacey. That's not uncomfortable at all. Ugh. Hopefully we'll hear who got it in a week or two. The boys are happy at school, our maid is great, and I'm busy planning Jack's birthday and Halloween and Thanksgiving and Chanukah! We're doing great on our budget and haven't eaten dinner out even once this month. Very pleased! Tomorrow night...falafel? We'll see!

1 comment:

recipes said...

very nice recipes and delicious salad recipes also.