cooking | life on wry

Don’t get me wrong, I love salads. But usually if they have blackened salmon or juicy sliced steak on them, along with walnuts and blue cheese crumbles and the like (far from low cal). Especially if they are made by anyone other than me. So I have to share my gratitude for actually finding a salad that is easy, low cal and healthy, and that even I enjoy!

The holidays are here and this is when I find myself surrounded by food that I love to indulge in and that can make my clothes even tighter. So, if I can switch out a few meals a week to this tasty salad that isn’t wracked with fat and calories, hot damn and hallelujah!

I found the recipe in a magazine and modified it so that even I would not be able to find too many excuses for not throwing it together quickly in a time crunch. Therefore it had to use ingredients that were easy to find, inexpensive and keep well in the fridge for a week or so. And it has to be quick and easy, and yummy.

Check it out:

Let’s call it – Life on Wry Salad

Ingredients – (now I keep this all on hand)

-Spinach or Arugula (or my favorite – a mix of both that comes prewashed and ready to eat in a container at the store. Yes, I go for easy)

-A sliced up apple (I like Fiji)

-Nuts (slivered almonds, walnuts or pine nuts or whatever you like. I go for a bag of presliced almonds so it’s ready to go.

-Quinoa – (This is new to me. Pronounced Keen -wa. It looks funky but it’s good. Look for near couscous/rice in grocery store. I cook a small saucepan full – about a cup of it according to directions – and I keep it in a small container in the fridge ready to go – that is key for me.)

-Blueberries (the trick for me is to keep any berries in the fridge prewashed from the moment I put them in the fridge – so I have no excuses not to eat them)

-Light Balsamic Vinaigrette (you can make your own or use Paul Newman’s like I do)

Directions –

Get your quinoa boiling per box directions (or pull out what you’ve got ready in the fridge). Then put as much spinach or arugula in bowl as you’d like, toss on some blueberries, a sliced apple, some nuts. Add some quinoa – 4 tablespoons or so – just eyeball it – and throw on some light balsamic vinaigrette. Voila!

End result –

A salad that is easy, tasty and high in all kinds of nutrients and vitamins that are good for your brain and everything else. And that I’m grateful I discovered!

Enjoy!

What are you grateful for today?

This post is from yesterday and it would have been posted yesterday had it not been for Argentine Corn Pie.

Lest I bore you with details, here are the cliffnotes:

1. Themed dinner party – Argentina theme

2. Each couple brings a dish – I chose “veggie/side” option to bring

3. Google search led me to Argentine Corn Pie – sounded easy enough, two pies should be perfect

4. I was sorely mistaken

5. Spent most of the afternoon (thank goodness I started early) working on these damn pies

6. I do not like to cook for good reason – usually doesn’t end well (see past post: Not sure any bitch can cook)

7. First one came out like a charm, second one did not set-up correctly (even though I swear I prepared it exactly the same way) – ceremoniously buried it in my kitchen trash

8. MacGyver ran to the store for me and I made another pie at the last minute

9. Looked iffy but I took it anyway

10. That pie ended up in the kitchen trash of our hostess – we shared the one that turned out beautifully and there was enough alcohol that no one noticed a shortage of Argentine Corn Pie

In closing, I lost almost four hours of my life to Argentine Corn Pie. Lesson learned – next time stick with dessert, buy it at the bakery and fashion a miniature Argentina flag to stick in the middle of it. Done.

I’m grateful that I didn’t let this futile exercise in cooking affect my evening and we had a wonderful time. With age comes great wisdom to not take anything too seriously.

What’s your worst cooking disaster?