Berry, Pecan, and Greens Salad with Caramel Vinaigrette

Who needs champagne?

Did you read that part about caramel vinaigrette? Yeah, I thought it sounded weird too. But it totally works. More than works. It is delicious. The fruit, the greens, a sharp cheese. It's the perfect salad for a perfect new year. It's healthy. Just a tiny bit indulgent. And lately berries have been on sale everywhere (why? I don't understand myself... At Meijer today blackberries were $.77, twice as many blueberries were $.99.)

You can eat this as a meal if you're on a New Year's diet, but if you'd like to make it more of a filling meal, you can add chicken.

Berry and Greens Salad with Caramel Vinaigrette
serves 6
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cost: $6.60 (that's $1.10/serving!)
blackberries: 1.00, blueberries: 1.00, raspberries: 1.00, greens: 1.00, caramel sauce: 1.00, pecans: 1.00, cheddar: .50 vinegar: .10

4-6 C greens
1 handful blackberries
1 handful blueberries
1 handful of raspberries
1 C pecans
1/4-1/2 C crumbly cheese--we used a very sharp cheddar; a feta would also work
3/4 C caramel sauce (store bought or homemade)
sugar (for candying the pecans)
1/4 C apple cider vinegar
optional add-ins: caramelized onions, chicken

First, prep the dressing. If you're making homemade caramel, you'll have to do that. Otherwise, take your caramel sauce and whisk it together with your vinegar. Done.

Now throw your pecans into a skillet with about 1/4 C sugar, turn up the heat to medium or just above that. Stir occasionally and cook until the sugar is melting and adhering to the pecans. Remove them and place them on some parchment paper to let cool.

Assemble your salad--greens, berries, crumbly sharp cheddar, then the cooled pecans. Dress with the dressing. And you're done.

Note: If you wanted to skip the candying of the pecans, you totally can. I did once and this salad was still amazing.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Rainbow Salad

This salad is super fun and super crunchy (both literally and figuratively). It is super pretty and super yummy. It is super healthy and super raw. It is, in a word, super. (In case you missed that.)

Also, it makes a rainbow. Well, sort of. I mean as much as any salad could make a rainbow. There are the dark red cherries or cranberries, the orange-ish red apples, the yellow sunflower seeds, the green edamame, the blue kale (yes, it is missing in this picture--I ate all my kale and had to sub in some lettuce), and of course the purple cabbage. Some of those colors may be a wee bit of a stretch, I admit, but still--throw them all into a bowl and I'll be darned if it doesn't feel like you're eating a rainbow.

Also, even though this salad is super healthy, it doesn't feel at all spartan; it feels indulgent. I love that in a salad.

And price? The bulk of this salad is made up of super cheap foods--cabbage, apples, kale. These pretties can all usually be found for under $1/pound. I'd never bought edamame before and was surprised that it wasn't a bank-breaker either (you can find it in the frozen foods section--my package was $1). And the more expensive cranberries and sunflower seeds--those you just need a bit of.

This salad recipe came with its own dressing, which was delicious. It will be posted below. However, I found myself using the Treehouse dressing (which is dumb easy) on it as well and I think most simple/sweetish dressings would rock it.

Rainbow Salad
adapted from The Spicy RD
Makes a whole bunch (I did not make this whole recipe--I halved it; it probably makes 12-14 servings)
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cost: $7.00 (or about $.50/serving)
cabbage: 2.00, kale: 1.00, berries: .75, edamame: .50, sunflower seeds: .50, apples: 1.00, olive oil: .75, other stuff: .50

Dressing:

3/4 C olive oil
1/4 C balsamic or apple cider vinegar (I used apple cider)
1 Tbsp maple syrup (the real stuff)
1/8 tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp salt

Combine in tight-lidded jar or mini-blender. Blend/mix until emulsified (oil and vinegar combined). Let it sit for flavors to meld if you've got the time. Otherwise, you're still good.

Salad:

Note: I give these as a guideline only. I noticed after making this a few times that I liked my salad a little cabbage heavy, and that I could easily just throw in a little of this and a little of that and it was awesome.

2-3 C chopped kale
3 C chopped purple cabbage
3/4 C dried berries (I used cranberries that are tart)
1/2 C shelled edamame, thawed
1/2 C raw sunflower seeds (roasted work too, but I love raw seeds)
2 C apples (a tart one is nice; I used pink lady; Granny Smith would be good too)

Toss ingredients together. Add salad dressing.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Work-a-Day Wednesday: Braised Salmon with Lettuce

Raise your hand if you've never cooked lettuce.

Now raise your hand if you've never thought about cooking lettuce.

Now raise your hand if it seems a little grody-potody to cook lettuce.

Whatever. Put your hands down; I get enough of that non-adventurous pickiness at home.

Apparently, from my latest issue of Everyday Food (which started coming to me free in the mail btw; we'll see how long it keeps coming), cooking lettuce is something people do. Not only that, but it's, like, cool and stuff. I, being rather decidedly on a certain unflattering end of the cool-o-meter, had never cooked or thought about cooking lettuce in my life. In fact, when I made this recipe, I did so only because I had a couple of heads that were getting a little wilty around the edges and I figured I had nothing to lose by throwing them into a pot with some salmon. Nothing to lose indeed. Because the meal took a mere 20 minutes from start to finish, was super nutritious, and it tasted pretty darn good too.

But why, I can hear you asking. Why cook lettuce instead of doing up a nice salad on the side? Because...

1. Your lettuce is getting a little wilty--not rotten, but wilty. Perfect for a pot.
2. You have too much lettuce and can't bear the thought of one more salad. I get this way sometimes. I go on a salad kick and keep buying tons of lettuce and then one day my kick ends and I have a couple heads in my refrigerator that I don't even want to look at.
3. Cooking does destroy the enzymes, but to offset that, I notice that I tend to eat more of a green when it's wilted than when it's crisp. (Perhaps simple mouth mechanics are to thank--slurp versus chew chew chew.)
4. Sometimes I've got lettuce on hand and nary another salad fixing to speak of. What do you do? Have lettuce salads. Well, I've done that before, but cooking lettuce is a nice (and more satisfying) alternative.
5. Good-bye salad dressing; you're not needed here. In this dish at least, the flavor from the broth, coupled with a little salt and pepper was all the lettuce needed to be perfectly tasty.
6. Your lettuce is bitter. This is a problem I come up against especially as a home gardener. If my lettuce stars don't align I wind up with bitter lettuce. Cooking removes that bitterness.

One final note on cooking lettuce. I am far from being crazy experienced here, but I used 2 different types--a loose leaf red lettuce (no, I don't know what it's called; why would I know that?) and a Bibb type head. The Bibb was much better. It maintained a little crunch in the stemmiest parts, which made for a good mouth feel. And, for whatever reason, it came out sweet and perfect with the lemony broth. The other was fine, but not nearly so impressive. So go for something with a little more structure.

Here you can see the two types I used in the pot. 

(P.S. I realized a couple minutes later I was supposed to chop them and took them out and did that--so don't throw your lettuce in like this. The head-like one won't ever cook fully.)

Braised Salmon with Lettuce
adapted from Everyday Food
Serves: 4
Prep time: 2 minutes
Cook time: 15 minutes (tops)
Cost: $5.85 (or $1.40/serving)
salmon: 4.40, lettuce: 1.00, lemon: .40, other stuff: .05

1 Tbsp butter
1 shallot (I didn't have so used a dash of onion powder.  I think a small leak or green onion would be good too)
2 tsp grated lemon zest (that of one small lemon and if you skip this, you'll be sad)
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/4 C low-sodium chicken broth (water with some type of seasonings might do the trick too)
4 skinless salmon fillets (about 6 oz. each)
salt and pepper
2 heads loose-ish leaved lettuce, chopped
chopped dill (for garnish and yumminess; I forgot it and missed it about halfway through the meal)

In large pot, melt butter. Add shallots (or onion-y substitution) and stir occasionally until tender.

Add lemon zest and juice. Add broth. Bring to a simmer.

Add salmon. Cover and cook 3 minutes.

Add chopped lettuce. Cover and cook until lettuce is wilted and salmon is cooked, about 6-9 minutes.

Sprinkle with lemon juice and serve topped with dill.

We had this with a side of rice and I found it light and satisfying both.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

How to Prepare Swiss Chard

Cheap Eat Challenge, Part 2: Watch as our family of 6 eats on less than $10/day.

Q: What's the prettiest green I know?
A: Swiss chard.

Especially the rainbow chard with it's orange, yellow, red and green, stalks, but they're all lovely. Our CSA had a little window box full of chard and when I saw it I decided it was a must try for me next year.

Q: What's the hardiest green I know?
A: Swiss chard.

You can grow it in any old dumpy spot in your garden. Clay-like soil, rocky soil, not really enough sun--sure why not. (I grew mine in a particularly lousy spot--clay-y soil, lots of run off, rocks on top of the clay-y soil, 2-3 hours of sun--this year and it did fine, not amazing, but fine.) Furthermore, it will grow all spring, summer, and fall, and doesn't have issues with bugs. Spinach and lettuces bolt come warmer weather and kale has trouble with cabbage loopers. Also, you can grow chard from seed easy peasy.

Q: What's one of the healthiest greens I know?
A: Swiss chard.

Have a look here for the skinny on chard. It's super packed (as in supery super packed) with antioxidants, as well as vitamins K, A, and C.

Q: What's my least favorite green to eat?
A: Swiss chard.

Sigh. It tends to run a bit bitter sometimes and has a more distinct flavor than other greens. Thus it doesn't hide as well in a casserole or omelet as it's green leafy brothers. But that hardly makes it unusable. Here are a few links to good recipes I've tried with chard, as well as a few pointers if you have a thing for pretty healthy vegetables, even if they require more prep than just being thrown in a salad. So next time you see a packet of seeds or a bunch of it at the farmer's market, go ahead, give it a whirl.

How to eat it raw:

It's good in a smoothie. I can't cram as much in as I do with spinach and kale because it doesn't hide as well, but you can certainly throw in a few leaves to good effect. Which is nice because it's good to mix your greens up and eat a variety (some green fiends say it's important to rotate or eat a variety because of the alkaloids that greens contain, but most of us never eat enough greens to have any alkaloid effect anyway).

I've also heard you can use very young leaves in salads, but haven't tried it.

How to sautee:

Cut the thick stems off the plants. Saute them first for 2-3 minutes. Then chop up the leaves and throw them in and saute another 2-3 minutes or until they are soundly wilted. Also, because they do tend to have a stronger flavor than other greens, you might want to use stronger flavorings in your saute--things like soy sauce and garlic, instead of just some butter with salt.

And of course you could boil them:

I don't, but you can. If you do, they might be good mixed in with mashed potatoes a la colcannon, only with chard instead of kale. It'd probably also be good with cream or lemon, salt, and pepper, or--again--heavier flavors.

A few good recipes:

New York Times Swiss Chard with Red Peppers. I made this this week (it's the one pictured above) and had it with brown rice. It was pretty good and packed with lots of healthy in-season-right-now-vegetables. P.S. I ate it by myself for lunch since wild horses, starvation, or Hitler could not have induced my family to try it. P.P.S. When Kip walked into the kitchen--before he saw what was in my pan--he said, "Wow, something smells good."

This savory tart from Smitten Kitchen. Kip did eat this one and liked it well enough, although he prefers spinach tart/pie, so that's what we usually stick to. As an additional note, Deb at Smitten Kitchen really loves chard, so she has a whole boodle or recipes involving it. Let me know if you try one and love it.

And speaking of letting me know, I've changed the settings on my comments section to make it easier to comment. So get commenting already. And eat swiss chard. And be happy.