Salad Basics

Salads are awesome. Remember that love affair of veggies I'm always spouting about? Salads are the epitome of veggie love.

For posts of three of my favorite salads, check out: Kale Avocado Salad, Israeli Salad, Caprese Salad with Avocado and Spinach Salad.

This post is focused on the basics of salads. I whole-heartedly reject iceberg lettuce (not enough taste and lower in nutrients than other lettuce) but whatever floats your boat. Many items like kale, mustard greens and arugula require a certain palate to enjoy. I detected a notable difference in my palate when I stopped drinking soda and did not add sugar to coffee/tea. You begin to appreciate the bitter tastes in life (brussels sprouts, black coffee, hops, vinegar, radishes, broccoli, lettuce, dark chocolate, etc.) You can food-chain to expose your palate to bitter tastes by using iceberg lettuce as your main items with a little of bitter greens.

Greens
I prefer to limit the amount of lettuce in the salad. Many salads are a ton of lettuce with a few veggies thrown in for color. No thank you. Lettuce can be your base but I prefer to let lettuce make up no more than 1/3 of the final product to let the other veggies shine.

Preferred greens: spinach, kale, arugula, butter lettuce, Romaine, cabbage (green or purple), mustard greens and fennel. You can tear by hand, chop or ribbon.

Vegetables
Endless possibilities of deliciously wonderful combinations. My favorite go-to veggies: purple onion, chives, sprouts, carrots, beets, radishes, corn. Technically fruits but used as vegetables: tomatoes (grape/cherry are my go-to), avocado, cucumber, zucchini, green beans, snow peas, bell pepper.

Fruits/Nuts/Cheese/Other
Fruit: mandarin oranges, apples, pears, strawberries and pineapple. Nuts: walnuts, almonds and pecans. Cheese: goat, feta, gorgonzola, bleu and cheddar cheese. Other: olives (green, black, kalamata), cranberries, chick peas, beans (black, pinto).

Meats
Adding meat can make the dish more filling. Pick from chicken, pork, beef, cured meats (sliced prosciutto, capicola).

See my post on salad dressings here.

When making a salad with a tough lettuce like kale, it's best to dress the salad about 20-30 minutes before serving to allow the lettuce to soften. Items like avocado or goat cheese can be added right before serving.

4th of July Desserts

Red, White and Blue. The hunt for a themed dessert has always illuded me. Mainly because I wait until the last minute and try and pull off a no-bake cheese cake (1 layer dyed red) topped with blueberries with only 1 hour to set. That cheesecake ala 2012 was deliciously soupy at the rooftop party I attended.

Enter 4th of July 2013. I had a goal: to find the most perfect dessert to capture the red, white and blue theme. I scoured Pintrest for the perfect delicacy. Then I found it: Pavolva. Do you like meringue? How about a whole cake made entirely of meringue?

Pavlova with Strawberries, Blueberries and Blackberries

This recipe is for the above pictured Pavlova. It was HUGE.

A much more modest-sized Pavlova was made at my parents' house a few weeks later. This size was much more manageable when multiple desserts were being served. This is a cake made entirely of meringue, it does not keep well.

PIE

Lauren strikes again with her lovely hand at pies. I love her technique for crusts. She uses cookie cutters to place pieces of crust around the whole pie. I remember another pie covered in leaf shaped crust pieces. Rustic and beautiful. I don't have the recipe and I wish to personally explore more pie baking in the future.

Themed Movie Nights

My husband and I share a love of the cinema and television. Our gatherings with friends often centered around a particular movie or show. Here's a look back at some of our events. I'll update this list as I post recipes to various items.

Movies

Lord of the Rings Thanksgiving
I will do a whole post on this as it was documented in pictures. We watched The Hobbit (cartoon) and the LOTR trilogy (extended editions) with a multi-course meal. I have many thoughts and comments about how we executed this so stay tuned for a full post.

Spaghetti Westerns
Django and A Fistful of Dollars. Calzones and meatballs. Calzones are awesome because they can be custom made by each person. The meatballs required an unexpected second batch due to their deliciousness.

Halloween Month
A love of scary/creepy movies turns into a weekly gathering for the month of October.

2013
Rosemary's Baby, Wake in Fright, The Descent, The Devil's Backbone. I think the only themed items were Rosemary Butter Cookies shaped like babies. I planned on making Dirt n' Worms for The Descent but didn't make it to the store. The Devil's Backbone showing was accompanied by drinking Real Ale's Devil's Backbone beer.

2012
The Shining, Cabin in the Woods, Hausu (House, 1977), American Werewolf in London. Unknown if any themed items were made.

Marvel Movie Marathon
We got lazy and went and ate Dim Sum. Then we watched Iron Man 1 & 2, Thor and Captain America (didn't have time for The Hulk). Binge-watching comic book movies makes for a great time. We then went to the Alamo Drafthouse for dinner and The Avengers.

TV Shows

Lost
The show that started it all. I actually started dating my husband after attending Lost nights. Though the ending of the show was disappointing, it was a damn good show to watch as a group. No particular menu here, we would wing it every week. Someone would suggest a main course and others would be accompanying side dishes. Desserts were had in plenty. I really wish I had better documented these as they were a weekly smorgasbord of deliciousness.

Battlestar Galattica
Like Lost, weekly event with food. I think we scaled back financially and meat wise at these events.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Blu Ray release)
Another gathering of friends to watch TNG in a whole new way. Check these out if you have ever liked Star Trek, fully remastered/restored. The amount of work put into these is incredible. Same as above, weekly menu changes. There was ideas about TNG themed desserts including gourmet Jello shots with layers, glitter and fancy colors. I think this idea washed due to experimentations with agar as a Jello substitute proving to be less than desirable. We moved to California before this dream could be fully realized. A Star Trek drinking night is always a good time.



The trick to planning one of these is to decide on something that will appeal to everyone. All of your friends love a particular tv show or genre of movies? Start there. Feeling a particular type of food? Let the food be your guide and look through movie types. We get by with Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime and Netflix. Check out your local video store for other hard-to-get films. Other gatherings we'd spend 30 minutes searching for a movie in our collection. These yielded some interesting picks but it's never my favorite way to pick a movie. Empathize with your guests, if they know the movie ahead of time, they can plan to be there or not. Choosing a movie and being the only hold out or getting bored half-way through can be hard.

Some spur of the moment picks: Hanna (such a good movie, really pushed by my husband and I, was a crowd pleaser), Kick Ass (fun for a group of people), and King of Thorn (interesting though none of use were familiar with the original manga so some internet research had to provide some context).