Great SALADS!!!

[PRgirl]

Salads for me are a fine art. I like combining all kinds of ingredients and making salads people enjoy tasting and are so good that they are satisfied eating the salad by itself instead of just as an accompinament to some main entree.

One secret to making a fine salad is texture. One must have different textures. For example, if you use soft and similar tasting ingredients, that bores the palate. But if you put contrasting, but complimentary ingredients in a salad, and yet keep the colors bright and interesting as well, you shall have a lot of success at any dinner or lunch in which salad is served. Salad does not have to be boring (with iceberg limp green lettuce and some tasteless tomatos and some pre-packaged commercial dressing) BLAH!! Who wants that? In fact, my salad philosophy is to ALWAYS MAKE YOUR OWN DRESSING AND ONLY PUT ON THE DRESSING WHEN YOU ARE ABOUT TO SERVE IT. Don't let it sit on the fresh vegetables and fruit and nuts and etc. Just toss it on lightly right BEFORE serving and consuming. To retain a fresh and crisp taste. Unless you are serving a salad in which marinating or saturating is part of the 'taste' and the technique you must utilize for the overall effect that you want to achieve. Then by all means marinate it. But most salads are not marinated. They are fresh and must be consumed promptly.

One fine salad (My own recipe) I call

Para Revivir La Vida (To Revive Life)

One head of live butter lettuce

Two large hothouse or organic vine ripened tomatos

Red onion

Red bell pepper

Cilantro (fresh)

Avocados (two medium size ones) Ripe.

One Pear preferably bartlett or not too ripe

Some slivered almonds (about four ounces or more)

Some walnuts (about two to three ounces)

A little feta cheese (about 6 ounces crumbled)

And some button mushrooms well rinsed (about 6-10 mushrooms)

Cut and dice all vegetables and fruit, place in a large salad bowl.

DRESSING

1/4 or more maybe a 1/3 cup of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1/4 of red wine vinegar

1/4 cup of Nakano sweet rice wine vinegar (this is a little sweet vinegar with a very pleasant and clean punchy taste)

Some fine sea salt

2 fresh garlic cloves crushed and chopped

a bit of dried oregano

A pinch of paprika

Mix well with whisk until all mixed together and immediately pour over tossed salad.

Serve with a side of slightly warm pita bread that have been brushed with olive oil and a sprinkling of freshly ground white pepper. The feta cheese should be put in at the end as well, to not allow to sit either. Leave the feta cheese crumbling for the very end as well.

ENJOY!!

I love salads I have HUNDREDS OF different ones. If there is an interest I shall continue.

[HollyElise]

oh PLEASE, PLEASE, do!

I have the same feeling about salads as you do. I think, especially in America, people get in a rut and think a salad has to be iceburg lettuce, a sickly hothouse tomato, perhaps some shredded cheddar cheese, one slice of cucumber, and then DROWN it in a yucky commercial dressing!

My friends love my salads because, like your salads... they never know what they might find in it! I make a lot of very different salads. Here is one:

1 cup cooked and chilled(but still firm) black beans
1 cup cooked and chilled corn kernels
melon balls from one whole cantalope
1 minced jalepeno pepper

Optional dressing:
juice of 1 lime
2 tablespoons honey



How have you been lately, PR Girl?

[PRgirl]

I am fine Holly Elise. Interesting you should mention a salad with black beans. I have one recipe from a famous Mexican female painter. Frida Kahlo from her famous cookbook Frida's fiestas.

two cans of black beans
One bunch of radishes
onion
panela cheese (a mexican low fat cheese) diced
fresh lime juice
salt
tomato
jalapenos diced too
cilantro

(I like adding a dash of olive oil too)

Mix together and eat. Yummy.

I have a wonderful baby Spinach salad with grilled vegetables brushed in marinated spices chilled that is excellent too!

Check out this link her salad is called Black bean, radish and cheese salad with the panela cheese. On page 215 of this cookbook:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...76926?v=glance

[HollyElise]

mmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!

Gosh that sounds great!

I'm going to make a salad for my dinner tonight, don't know quite what yet... i want to take care of my body, though, and i'd like to be eating more vegetables, particularly salads and soups!

Do you like Frido Kahlo's paintings? I lived in Mexico when i was a little girl, so i have a soft spot for Mexican art. Do you paint?

[PRgirl]

Originally posted by HollyElise
mmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!

Gosh that sounds great!

I'm going to make a salad for my dinner tonight, don't know quite what yet... i want to take care of my body, though, and i'd like to be eating more vegetables, particularly salads and soups!

Do you like Frido Kahlo's paintings? I lived in Mexico when i was a little girl, so i have a soft spot for Mexican art. Do you paint?

PRgirl: Funny you should ask about painters. My father was a talented painter. And he made frienships with other Puerto Rican painters. One out of friendship for my husband and I and my father, she gave us two of her finest works. She is gone now, and her work shows up on the internet. It is gorgeous. In my living room hangs this altar made by the painter. She was a fine woman. And an excellent artist. The photos in the altar are my mother in law now deceased and the little boy with her is my husband. The loveliest and most wonderful male creature ever produced. Lol!! I have had offers for that unique art. Now that she is gone, everyone wants a piece of her art. I would never sell it. It has too much sentimental value. Try this link:


http://cemaweb.library.ucsb.edu/4x6/cat1039_12.jpg

http://www.maxineroseschur.com/images/emmanuel3.jpg

talented wasn't she? May her soul rest in peace dearest Cristina.

[HollyElise]

oh my!!! those are lovely!!! I see it says something on the butterfly, but i can't make it out.

[PRgirl]

Holly Elise there is nothing written on the butterfly. The butterfly is one my mother in law knitted as a doily. When my mother in law died HollyElise, my husband was DEVASTATED, he could not sleep or eat. He mourned her. And he had to come home at night after work and see all her little things and she was no longer there. It made it so much worse. Cristina decided to take some of her humble possessions and make an altar of her life for my husband to keep to remember her by always. The ceramic parrot was to remember a real parrot she once had called Rebeca. Lol. And the little chain of saints and such was from all her old trinkets and jewelry she left behind. Cristina strung them up in a chain to remind my husband of his mother. And the big picture on top where she is dressed in Pink and with a gentleman is my mother in law's first husband Luis. He was a gambler and a womanizer BUT she loved him a lot. She did divorce him though, but she always loved him the most I think. My husband's father Rafael was her second husband. And my mother in law named my husband (his middle name) by her first husband's name. Significant I think, for a divorced woman to do that.

My husband did not find out he was adopted and not her biological son until after she was deceased. When he found out, he felt even worse. He never could tell her, "It is okay Mama, it doesn't matter. You shall always be my mother. Forever." So, Cristina did the altar for him. My mother-in-law liked Maria Felix and Pedro Infante (the Mexican film stars from the 1940's) that show up in the altar on the bottom left and bottom right sides of the artwork, she used to go and see them (the Mexican stars) when she was a factory worker in NYC in her youth, before going back to San Juan, Puerto Rico and raising my husband. She was a beautiful woman. Petite, and dark and pretty. My husband is tall and doesn't have her coloring or her looks. But he has her in his heart----Forever.

PRgirl.

She raised a real caballero, Holly Elise. A fine man she raised in my beloved husband. She should be proud and smiling wherever she is. Happy Mother's Day Angelica. Happy Mother's Day wherever you are now.