October 29, 2011

The Big Salad Recipe

I’ve been eating a lot of salads lately and wanted to share my big salad recipe.  It’s not just a regular salad, it’s a BIG salad.
(Click over to my blog if you can't see the video above).

Okay, you shouldn’t get that worked up about, but it is a pretty tasty salad.  And I have a secret ingredient:

grilled-vegetables

Grilled vegetables.  I use my good ‘ol George Forman to grill mushrooms and onions, giving them a nice caramelized flavor.  Since I like sweet onions, especially caramelized ones, I use both red and vidalia onions.

While I’m grilling my veggies, I also hard boil some eggs.  For a big bowl of salad, I add about 4 hard boiled eggs.

Then once the mushrooms and onions are grilled, I toss them into a bowl along with the eggs and whatever other vegetables I have on hand.  Today I added broccoli and half of an avocado, but I sometimes also add bell peppers and sliced carrots.

salad-ingredients

To make it a real BIG salad, I also add pasta.  I do about a quarter of a box of 100% whole wheat pasta and a quarter box of Ronzoni Garden Delight pasta which is flavored with veggies.  The veggie pasta adds a nice flavor to the healthy, but sometimes bland, whole wheat stuff.  A tip is to start cooking the whole wheat pasta a few minutes before you add in the white/veggie pasta since the whole wheat kind takes longer to cook.  I forgot this today and ended up with undercooked whole wheat and overcooked veggie pasta.  It doesn't just even out as I had hoped.

After all of the good salad stuff is in, I add the leafy salad part.  I used both a garden salad and spring mix since I had both on hand and I’m crazy like that.  I save the greens for the end of the salad because otherwise I end up with way too much of the grassy stuff and not enough of the veggies/eggs/pasta.

party-pasta-salad

I finish up by mixing everything together and tossing it with a light salad dressing (usually olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and salt) and sprinkling some low fat shredded cheese on top.


pasta-salad

So that’s my BIG salad.  Just make sure you get a proper thank you when you serve it to your friends.

1 comment:

akawest said...

You now have given me a reason to buy a GF grill. That salad looks yummy!