I’m back! Well, I wasn’t really gone, but I haven’t been “here”. I’ve been busy making salads, trying out new things and generally enjoying the summer. I made an entirely new salad yesterday and it was pretty good (see my suggestions to improve). I tried it with my family last night at dinner (without meat) and I’ve got it in my lunch for today. Do you like grilled vegetables? I do and I figured I could turn that love into a salad and here’s how:
Lately I’ve been making two types of mason jar salads on Sundays. I think that three is just too much to do and making two gives me the opportunity to switch out each day. I like to make a favourite, one that I know I’ll like (and my family too) and also, if the mood strikes, a new salad. Maybe that means just changing up one of the existing salads, like last weeks Mediterranean with Pasta or something completely new, like this week!
When I try to create a new salad, as I’ve said in previous posts, I try not to think of what would be good in a mason jar, but rather what I want to eat and then I’ll figure out how to get it into the Mason jar. Have you ever had one of those grilled veggie sandwiches from a deli? In the past I’ve only had these at a work meeting that was catered. I just love all the flavours and textures of grilled veggies. So, in my imagination, I assembled the salad on my plate: peppers, onions, eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, goat cheese and roasted chicken. I made my shopping list and off I went to the store. To start with I prepped each vegetable and then marinated all of them in a balsamic dressing for about 30 minutes before placing each veggie on the heated BBQ grill:
Sébastien (my youngest) was awesome yesterday. He assisted me on the salad creation, every step of the way, from prep to BBQ to assembly. If not for him, this would have taken MUCH longer. For dinner last night, my husband made pork chops crusted in Italian seasoning and we paired it with this grilled salad (not including the chicken) and it was great. But as we do when we sit down for a meal, we review what we’re eating. The flavours of the salad were great but the texture was just OK. Sébastien remarked that the salad was missing mushrooms. WHAT? How could I have left out my favourite vegetable? *sigh*. I’m going to make this salad again this week, but with some modifications. If you notice in the picture, it looks like the dressing (balsamic) is really high in the jar, I think that’s because the veggies have a ton of moisture. But I’ll let you know once I have it for lunch.
Once I managed to get the kitchen all cleaned up, I had another idea: Breakfast. Well, since I didn’t really want bananas and peanut butter for breakfast again this week (that’s been my mainstay for the last two weeks) I decided to whip up a batch of overnight oats with berries. My only real twist was that I added 1 scoop of protein powder to the recipe. My thought was that this would keep me fuller longer. I can say to you that OMG this works. I ate at about 8 and so far (it’s 11:30) I have not been hungry for anything. Check off a win for me!
Here’s to a great week, looking forward to thinking about a new salad for next weeks. If you have a favourite, please feel free to share it with me. Even if you don’t think it could fit into a mason jar.
Karenlee
“Plan for tomorrow, because tomorrow you won’t have time”
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