BORING SALAD NO MORE

Last night for dinner, I wanted a light quick salad.  I opted for the boring romaine and any veg I had laying around.  I chopped up the romaine and added yellow bell pepper, cuc, and tomatoes.  Boring!!!

I've been watching a lot of You Tube videos about Fruitarianism and Low Fat Raw Vegan Diet/Lifestyles and thought I would try a version of one of their salad dressings.  I threw in the blender the rest of the yellow pepper I had.  I remembered that a mango was one of the dressing ingredients, so i threw in a chopped up ataulfo mango.  To add a hint of saltiness, I threw in one chopped celery rib.  And then for some added watery consistancy I threw in  a few grape tomatoes and a bit of fresh dill from the garden.  Blend, blend, blend.  No water needed to be added as there was enough from the tomatoes.

OMG!  This dressing was amazing!  Sweet, creamy, and delicious.   I could have probably eaten the dressing all by itself like a gazbacho.

My husband did suggest to add a bit of red onion.  But little did he know there was NO FAT in this salad dressing at all.  Only fruit and veggies.  As for Chris's suggestion, next time I will try a little red onion.  Maybe it will add another yummy dimention to my dressing.

I turned my boring salad into Extrodinary.

Try making your own salad dressings.  It's quick and easy and LOW FAT!!!
Fat makes you FAT!!!!
Use a dense fruit as the base.  Start with a mango, a peach, some pineapple even.
Add in a few veg like tomato, or cucumber or bell pepper ( any colour )or all of these.
Add in some celery for a bit of saltyness.
Finish with some fresh herbs, dill, basil, mint, etc.
Your dressing can be a mix of fruit and veg or fruit only or veg only.  Although I do recommend adding some fruit, they make any salad taste yummy with a hint of sweet.
Add a small piece of hot pepper if you want an extra little kick.
If you need to, add a bit of olive oil or any vinegar of your choice.  A bit of avacado can replace the olive oil, or a few pecans too.  But I would recommend using only fresh fruit and veggies as these make the dressing low fat and super fresh tasting.
Just blend everything as much or a little as you like.  Start with a few ingredients and work up to more.
The best part is you get to taste as much as you want through your entire new salad dressing journey.  Yum!

I have also tried fruit only dressings..
A whole peeled clementine orange and tomato.
Orange and mango.  Yum!
Pineapple and mango.

But the all sweet fruit dressings, I like to use for my all fruit salads only.

Here's the recipe for my NO MORE BORING SALAD.

INGREDIENTS FOR SALAD

1 head chopped romaine lettuce
1 large handful baby spinach
2 mini cucumbers ( these are my favorite, I find the english cuc's have very little flavour anymore )
1/4 yellow bell pepper, chopped
1 tomato, chopped

INGREDIENTS FOR SALAD DRESSING

1/4 yellow pepper chopped
1 rib celery
1 ataulfo mango
6 grape tomatoes
1Tbsp fresh dill

INSTRUCTIONS

Place all salad ingredients in a bowl.

Place all dressing ingredients in a blender and blend away. You can make it as chunky or as smooth as you like by how long you blend up all of the ingredients.

looking down into the blender.

Pour dressing onto salad and devour.  Yummmmy!

Enjoy!
Eat Well,
:)

MORE NATURALLY COLOURED EASTER EGGS

Continued from my previous post....
I've done more egg colouring myself and what I've come up with are some interesting results.
I tried the beet dye with 1-1/2 Tablespoons of vinegar and left the boiled eggs in the dye for about 24 hrs.

The eggs did take on some dye, but more of a brown-pink color. Unlike the actual deep burgundy colour of the dye itself.

This was the red cabbage leaf dye.  I made it by boiling about 3 large cabbage leaves in 2 cups of water and letting them soften.  After cooling a bit I poured only the dye into a jar and added the boiled eggs and 1-1/2 Tablespoons of vinegar.  They were in the dye for about 24 hrs.






This one is my favourite.   Wouldn't have believed that purple cabbage could make such a nice  blue. When the eggs first came out of the dye, they were the bright blue colour like the egg to the bottom left of the bowl.  As I let them sit out to dry, they took on more of a teal shade, which I find to be very nice, and interesting that they could even change colours after merely drying. Really cool!

Such a nice yellow tone the turmeric makes.  In this jar is 2 Tablespoons of  turmeric I boiled in 2 cups of water.  I added 1-1/2 Tablespoons of vinegar to  the dye into a glass jar, and placed the boiled eggs in too.  The turmeric settled to the bottom of the jar, so every time I went into the fridge, I gave the jar a twist and gentle shake to move around the colour.

This jar has been moved and shaken so the turmeric solution is all over the eggs.








The eggs were in this jar for about 24 hours and took on a pale yellow hue.  Not as dark as the colour in the jar itself, but still a nice yellow.
I actually expected more of a brighter colour.  These turned out more pastel.

This jar has the about half package of frozen spinach leaves that were boiled with 1 Tablespoon of greens+ powder. I poured the whole works into the jar with the boiled eggs and 1-1/2 Tablespoons of vinegar. These were in the fridge for about 24 hours too.  As you can tell, the eggs still seem very white.

The eggs out of the jar have a very pale dark green colour.  I didn't think the eggs would pick up the dark green of the spinach, as it hadn't dyed the water very much anyway.
But the eggs did still take on a bit of the green.






Here's my bowl of naturally coloured Easter eggs.  Blue, yellow, pinky-brown and pale green.  I guess not too bad considering these are all naturally made.  I really love the blue/teal colour the best.  It came out the most vibrant of all of the colours.  The yellow I like the second best as the color did take quite nicely.
Maybe next year I'll have to try something different to get more vibrant colours to adhere to the eggs. Any suggestions are welcome.

I think that's enough eggs for this year.  Lots to eat!
Hmm.... devilled eggs, egg salad sandwiches, sliced eggs on a spinach salad....
...no problem,  they'll all be gone in no time.

Eat Well.