Salad Week: Chop Salad

Some folks call this one "garbage salad," but... ucchh. I can't cope with that. Let's never speak of the un-tasty name again. It's too pretty!



The great thing about a chop salad is that you can alter the ingredients easily according to what you have. Change the type of berry, add some cold pasta (like rotini or farfalle) to stretch your lettuce out (seriously), add croutons, use any kind of cheese, switch to beef, whatever. Check out the good stuff in this guy:

chopped Romaine
chopped turkey bacon
green onions
diced breaded chicken
diced avocado
pecans
strawberries
feta cheese

I just whisked up some balsamic vinaigrette (1 part vinegar to four parts olive oil) with lemon juice, Italian seasoning, pinch of salt & pepper and a little sugar to taste, but this would go with lots of different kinds of dressing.

Chop your heart out! (Eyw, that's worse than the other phrase...)

Salad Week: Buffalo Chicken

Are you ready for something fun and exciting? I THOUGHT YOU WERE. And I'm here to help.

In honor of this mother of a hot summer, and in honor of the fact that my beloved lettuce no longer makes me sick to look at, I'm posting a new salad every day for a week. Because we've been eating a lot of them, because they keep you regular, and because dang, did I mention? IT IS FREAKING HOT OUTSIDE.

First up is the fattiest salad of the bunch. Still, when you consider that every time I eat this, I don't have my fat ass over at Hooters with my face in a platter of chicken wings, it's almost like a diet food.



I've got Romaine lettuce, diced celery, full-fat Marie's bleu cheese dressing, a few chow mein noodles, shredded cheddar, and about three diced buffalo-style chicken fingers on this sweet baby. And I think I'm gonna have this one again tonight. Not for the faint of heart! You could lighten it up by using vinaigrette and a few bleu cheese crumbles instead of the Marie's (and no cheddar), but I won't be messing with that until after baby arrives, because studies show that higher-fat dairy products are good for pregnant women (and women who are trying to conceive). Jealous?

My Fancy Hostess

While getting larger and larger, I think Chris has lost more and more weight "stepping and fetching" for me: because getting up off the couch is just hard right now. While sick in the first trimester, I didn't get up much at all. I'd like to say that I'm just as active as I was before I got pregnant, but contrary to my high expectations for myself, taking a slow walk for a half hour is a real source of pride for me right now. When I used to be heard saying, "Hey! I did FIVE miles in under 45 minutes today!" you might now hear me saying, "Hey! I totally got up and walked after my nap today, instead of just eating and going back to bed!" I need a t-shirt that says, "Just Happy to be Ambulatory." And maybe it should have one of those slow-moving alert triangles on the back.

To further disappoint those who haven't yet walked a half-mile in a pregnant lady's overstuffed shoes, I must also admit that I've fallen into the habit of a little something sweet and a big glass of milk before bed. I sleep so much better this way. And I've been watching a lot of cook shows, like "Next Food Network Star" since the nausea left town. I think it is rubbing off on Chris, because he fancied up my snack the other day. Dig the chocolate swirl!



The plates are some that I found on deep discount after last Halloween at Jewel. They were in stacks as sets, with the black crow figure interchanged with a black cat silhouette, a jack-o-lantern, or a spider. I mined out all the crows that I could find and just bought those (and I don't remember where I acquired the Miss Piggy "Pigs in Space" Welch's glass, but she's been with me a long time.)

Thanks, Chris, for all your stepping and fetching. You'll get your wife back, at least somewhat, before the year is out!

Marinara Sauce from Scratch

I have some friends who, since the advent in recent years of competitive cooking shows, have flattered me by saying that I should try out for one of those shows. The truth is, I am really just someone who likes to eat, and experiment at home. I have no clue as to certain types of cooking technique. There are areas I just haven't ventured into yet (see the following), and areas I never intend to venture into (why would I try and make great Chicago-style pizza at home when Lou Malnati's makes the perfect pie?) I would be sure to make a total ass of myself on national television. Want a for instance? Here is my shame: until last summer, I never ever made marinara sauce from scratch - meaning, from real, whole, fresh tomatoes.

But you can't say that about me now!



I have friends, blog-reading friends, and adamant strangers tell me that (especially as an Italian) I should be loaded into a cannon and shot straight into hell for not making my sauce from scratch every week. Maybe they're right. But how do you sustain this 100% of the time? Humbly and truly, I just do not get it. The sauce I was taught to make comes from canned tomatoes. That's not really "from scratch." (Maybe that's what some of these people mean, as opposed to jar sauce. Well, if that's what they mean, then THEY'RE not making sauce from scratch, either.) Anyway, that's all I've ever done: either dad's sauce or marinara from canned tomatoes, or a good jar sauce when in a hurry, sick, or hung-over. (I know, I know. But don't throw your tomatoes. Save them for sauce!)



Here's what happened. Ma came to visit, and brought (sorry Ma) a SHIT-ton of beautiful, fresh tomatoes and a lorry-load of okra. What I usually do with tomatoes from her garden is grab a salt shaker, slice, and eat. But this was more than we could have gotten through before the fully ripe beauties went bad. We ate our fill (she, Chris and I) at every meal, and I still had a ton left when she left. So I called my brother and said, "How the hell do I do this?" He said to wash up the tomatoes (natch) and to dip them for a minute or two in boiling water. Then you could peel off the skin, and seed them. These garden tomatoes were so ripe, I just had to run them under hot tap water. I peeled off the skin, split them open in my hands, and scooped out the seeds with my fingers. I set them all aside in a bowl.

I heated a deep skillet with some olive oil, then heated some garlic in it. I finely diced as much onion as I wanted in it, then heated that. I added some "baby bellos," (small portobello mushrooms), and sweated those. Then I added the tomatoes, as much fresh oregano and basil as I thought proper, and some red wine. I kept letting it cook down, adding salt, pepper and about a bit of sugar as I went (it cuts the acid). I just kept tasting it, and soon it was definitely sauce. Whoopee! The bellos are optional, and I like to add a bit of red pepper flakes, but if you don't care for a spicier sauce, you could leave that out, too. You could add green pepper but... guh. Not for this kid.

I had plenty of sauce left over for pizza and pasta throughout the week, so perhaps if I ever get a deep freeze and the garden going next year, I can make enough over a summer to ALWAYS make my sauce from scratch (or at least defrost it that way).

Salad Dressing for Dinner

Why is blogging so difficult? Seriously, I'm going to try not to bore you with the details, but I am slowly trying to get one chunk done at a time on my current project: making it so I can easily blog from UPSTAIRS on the laptop. See, the big ol' computer is downstairs in Chris' office, and I don't like sitting in the basement. But until recently all the networked files couldn't be accessed until I turned on that computer. Now I don't have to, but there are still some bugs to work out! Shih.

Anyway, one of the tastiest things I'm stuck on lately is a new way to do a chicken cutlet around here. I've been taking a package of the Perdue Fit 'N Tasty thin-sliced chicken breasts (you could pound them yourself if you're so inclined), putting them in a large Ziploc with salad dressing and olive oil, and letting them marinate in the fridge. I like honey mustard or ranch dressing. It works great with leftover dressing -- you know, the large containers you get with other stuff? I had a couple of containers of honey mustard from some "big salads" I got at some places, and some ranch dressing at another time from our new favorite pizza place, Wayne's. We get the ranch dressing with the cauliflower bites that they have. Yum. Too good to waste!



You just mix up the dressing and the olive oil by hand after you seal the bag. When you open it, you dredge the chicken in a little Italian breadcrumb, and lightly fry it in a little oil, then drain it on paper towels. "Winner winner, chicken dinner!" It is so moist and delicious, I've been making it once a week.



I serve it with brown rice and a veggie. I cooked up the brown rice, and I happened to also have some Newman's Own Low Fat Sesame Ginger dressing also on hand. I mixed some of that into the rice, and hey presto! An asian side dish.

Anyhoo, sorry about the kinks in the system. I'm working them out, and if not, I'll try and get over my fear of the basement and post more often!

Oscar's Chicken Salad

This post features two vintage pics! Whoopee! Check out my growth as a photographer...



When I was at Hull House, I worked with a lot of cool people. It almost made it okay that the president's secretary was an out-of-hand, psychotic bitch who would forget that she asked you to do something, and then scream at you for doing it. Almost. Anyway, there was this guy named Oscar who made the greatest chicken salad for the potluck occasions.

I know it may not look that appealing, but it is really tasty. He would boil a chicken, pick it, then add mayo, cayenne to taste, lots of paprika, garlic powder, salt and pepper, a drained can of peas and carrots (you heard me right), and chopped boiled potatoes. When I make it, I pick a cooked rotisserie chicken. I ain't boiling no chicken.

I like to serve a couple scoops of it on a bed of romaine lettuce with some French or Western dressing drizzled around the edges, like so:



The salad is like a one-dish chicken dinner, and it is never too hot outside to eat it.

Is it a Mexican thing to do to put the peas and carrots in salads? I'm wondering, because when I was in school last year, I saw another student eating tuna salad that her husband had made. It had peas and carrots in it, and I said, "Is your husband Mexican?" She said, "Yeah! How did you know?" Huh!

Hooters Hot Wings

Chris and I both like buffalo wings. My favorites are actually the ones my brother used to fry up in the kitchen at Ruby Tuesday's, when he and I both worked there. That was twelve years ago now (wow.) He would always make his crazy off-the-menu hot, not so hot for me.

Now Ruby's is under new ownership (the whole chain, that is), and I dunno if their wings are the same or not. Chris likes the wings at the Ram Brewery, and they are actually the ones that remind me most of the ones that David used to make back when. But you know what? I think my favorites are the buffalo wings at Hooters. (I'm taking you to the menu here, sparing you the chatty waitress on the homepage. Click on "chicken wings.") They are breaded (you can get them without), and more like fried chicken. The hot sauce is sort of inside the breading, so you don't get the sauce all over your face (but if you're me, you get the bleu cheese there, anyway.)

Remember when opening a new Hooters was the talk of the town? I remember a big hoopla when they first opened one in Champaign. I dunno why people complained. I'm not really into women being objectified or anything, but I'm just saying that no one seemed to have a problem with the strip clubs just outside of town. The Hooters waitresses are dressed, after all. Somewhat.

I started eating at a Hooters when I lived in Nashville. It was literally in my backyard. I was shy about going in at first, and soon I was going by myself to sit down to a beer and some wings on the way back from work. The menu was more limited then... I seem to remember maybe burgers, an open-faced steak sandwich, the wings, and not much else. Chris likes their burgers.



Now Hooters has salads, healthier options, blah blah blah. I'll probably never try any of those things, because I don't know if I can go in there and not get the hot wings.



Chris accompanied me on a recent trip to get a replacement part for a sofa I had purchased out at Woodfield Mall (I can never buy a piece of assembly-required furniture that doesn't have a broken piece, it seems) and I practically hijacked the car when we drove past Hooters. I know he's been worried about the amount we've been eating out/driving through lately, but what can I do? When baby wants wings, baby wants wings.

Actually, I wonder if it was the hooters baby wanted...