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Something Easy & Green Salad

Dec 052011

Clearly I’ve been MIA for the last month. I swear it’s not because I don’t love you. I do. And I definitely still love food. What I don’t love is the lack of time going on in my life right now.

The more honest truth is that I’m often in places where veg-friendly food is difficult to find, and I’m becoming more flexible with what I call a meal: French fries and salads, sure why not? Pizza sans cheese. Yep. A soy latte with a side of espresso? Ok.

I realize this isn’t the picture of healthy living, and I’m not telling you about this because I’m proud. It’s just the truth, and we all know how much I love that.

Let me paint you a picture: I’m often so busy that 4:30 pm rolls around and I realize I haven’t yet made it to the store for kale and other veggies. By that point I can’t even imagine chopping, blending or massaging. I want simple. I want salad thrown into a cardboard box. See what I mean about turning into one of those people I used to judge.

Now I get the appeal of pre-made food.

This week, however, my craving for kale was intense, and it had to be quenched, no matter how much I didn’t want t0 haul a&# to Whole Foods. In lieu of a complicated raw salad with a nut-based dressing and a million toppings, I just wanted something easy, something green, something simple. You just chop, rip, and massage.

Something Easy & Green Salad

(serves 1)

Ingredients:

1/2 head of dinosaur kale, torn into bite-sized pieces
1/2 cup chopped cucumber
1 T capers, drained
1 avocado, chopped
1/4 cup dulse strips (the dried kind; they’ll soften up when mixed with the dressing)
1/4 cup walnuts or any other nut, chopped
Optional: sun-dried tomatoes, olives, carrots, sprouts, corn, beets etc.

Dressing: make your own favorite lemony dressing; mine was a combination of hemp oil, dulse flakes, lemon juice, and miso blended in the Vita-Mix for a few seconds.

How to: Place the kale and the dulse into a big bowl. Pour desired amount of dressing over the veggies and massage with your hands until well-coated and softened. Let sit for 5-10 minutes. Mix in other ingredients.

And there you have you have it. Easy. Minimal mess. No fuss. Much better than fries and a soy latte.

Red (Dye #40), White, and Blue: Mustard & Horseradish Kale Salad for Times When You're Stuck on an Island In New Jersey with Your In-Laws

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Jul 032011

So many ways to show your love for our great country over 4th of July weekend, and I’m not just talking about listening to country music and buying flag-adorned, made in China Old Navy attire. You could, for example, agree to spend the weekend on a toenail-sized island in rural New Jersey with a fridge full of Hillshire Farms kielbasa, “fresh, never frozen!” mystery meat, and mini bottles of Gatorade. Agreeing to spend a weekend in a practically snack-sized house on an island means that all of your food has to be transported by 100-calorie pack-sized boat. It also means that if you — a weirdo daughter-in-law who doesn’t eat animals — want to eat anything at all, you need to plan ahead. Way ahead. It might also mean not freaking out if everyone on the entire island is eating every packaged food imaginable, in the most American ways possible — from individually portioned Fruit Loops and Tostitos Salsa to the bread & butter pickles that may have borrowed J.D.’s Bar study yellow highlighter for a splash of Yellow #5 color. You’ll also need to work with what you have, planning ahead, and finding the nearest Whole Foods BEFORE you go on a mother effin’ boat.

One thing you learn out on the road as a vegan, especially in rural areas, is how easily you can be surprised by the vegan options or lack thereof. With one spur of the moment stop for BBQ tofu or a rogue Subway with avocado (!), assumptions about a particular region can go by the wayside, and all is forgiven.

Where I once use to obsessively plan food for trips, I now know I can wing it across the US of A no problem. Granted, I’ve eaten pre-washed, pre-cut salad out of the bag, dumped pre-made guacamole atop and called the resulting meal culinary success. But bottom line? I didn’t starve, and it was really funny. Also, that was in New Hampshire. Continue reading »

Dress Up: Blackberry Vinaigrette

Dressings, Raw 8 Responses »

Jun 042011

In my real life, I try to make companies and seriously accomplished business owners/writers/generally amazing people sound really good. For the most part they don’t need much makeup; their success is often all the glitter one could need (and let’s be real, no business wants to be known for their 1980s over-the-top blue eyeshadow marketing techniques). But sometimes, a little wordsmithing and tweaking of the truth to sound especially good to an outsider is all that’s needed to sell a product/service/book.

I’ve long been a lover of words, and while my real passion is writing for myself (and living in a castle someday), I pay my bills by using the written word to promote others. Some days it really sucks and can feel like you’re an ant in a content farm, and other days it’s kind of fun and not unlike playing dress up. You imagine you’re the consumer (or fan or whatever), and you dress up the truth to fit the audience. In other words, you make something sound and look good.

Fortunately, I’m pretty decent at doing that with words, but I’m not so great at dressing up other things. See, I have most certainly worn the same jean cut-off shorts for the last three days. There is nothing dressed up about shorts with holes. And while my closet is full of dresses, I’m much more comfortable in tank tops, t-shirts and Toms. In case you were wondering, California beach bum is not usually the uniform of choice in Washington, DC where the power suit and conservative pumps are the norm (IMO, nothing fashionable should ever use the word pump, which mostly makes me think of gas and lewd actions). Continue reading »

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Something Easy & Green Salad

Red (Dye #40), White, and Blue: Mustard & Horseradish Kale Salad for Times When You're Stuck on an Island In New Jersey with Your In-Laws

Dress Up: Blackberry Vinaigrette

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