Lettuce and Bacon

It is spring and the first heads of lettuce are coming in, I so must have a dish from my youth. I can not count the number of nights dinner was thick strips of bacon, fried, with a salad of lettuce and onion, or spinach greens wilted with a hot bacon and vinegar dressing, served with a big wedge of corn bread and butter.

One can “class” this up and use spinach greens with a “Hot Bacon Dressing”, but I’ll always think of this as wilted lettuce.

These are the things that memories are made of, (some times, you wish to go back for just one more meal)

Background
As said before

Bacon is a cut of meat taken from the sides, belly, or back of a pig, then cured, and smoked. Meat from other animals, such as beef, lamb, chicken, goat, or turkey, may also be cut, cured, or otherwise prepared to resemble bacon. Bacon may be eaten fried, baked, or grilled, or used as a minor ingredient to flavor dishes.

Sarah Hepola, on Salon.com, suggests that eating bacon in the modern, health-conscious world is an act of rebellion: “Loving bacon is like shoving a middle finger in the face of all that is healthy and holy while an unfiltered cigarette smolders between your lips.”

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Fruit Salad

A absolute classic salad for an absolute classic meal. NOTHING says thanksgiving to me more than Dressing and Fruit Salad…

Background
Fruit salad is a dish consisting of various kinds of fruit, served either in their own juices or a syrup, it can be served as an appetizer, a side-salad, or a dessert. When served as an appetizer or as a dessert, a fruit salad would be a fruit cocktail, or fruit cup.

Small cups of fruit salad are commonly served for dessert in American public schools, I will endevor to remove that stigma from this dish. (Think of the emotional scaring.)

There are a number of home recipes for fruit salad that contain different kinds of fruit, or that use a different kind of sauce other than the fruit’s own juice or syrup. Other recipes use sour cream (such as in ambrosia), yogurt or even mustard as the primary sauce ingredient.

An ever-popular variation also uses whipped cream mixed in with many varieties of fruits (usually a mixture of berries). Rojak, a Malaysian fruit salad, uses a spicy sauce with peanuts and shrimp paste. Moroccan cuisine, often as part of a kemia, an extended variety of fruit salads as appetizers or small dishes analogous to Spanish tapas or eastern mezze.

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Chicken Curry Salad Sandwich

So combat / install / commissioning operations have halted, and once again the team has managed to defeat the Demon Murphy, and send him back to the land of chaos and confusion. As always with these operations I reach for high protein, energy food, like beef. At this point, I’m very beefed out… So beefed out, I’d refuse a steak. (Yes, I know this is like kicking Marlyn Monroe out of bed..)

But I’m also veggied out as well, (This is like kicking Phylis Dyllar, out of bed…), so what does this leave…

Chicken, chicken with a bit of smoke from the stove top smoker, and add some Indian spices a fresh blender mayonnaise, some finely chopped veggies, and serve on a nice ciabatta ..

Background
Chicken salad is any salad that comprises chicken as a main ingredient. In Europe and Asia this may be complemented by any number of dressings, or indeed no dressing at all and the salad constituent can vary from traditional leaves and vegetables, pastas, cous cous to noodles or rice.

In the US it refers to a salad consisting primarily of chopped chicken meat and a fat-based binder such as mayonnaise or salad dressing. Like tuna salad, it is served as a creamy spread, and it is often used for sandwiches. Typically it is made with leftover or canned chicken in the United States.

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Grilled Chicken Salad

It was 95 yesterday, it’s 95 today, I’m NOT cooking.

But thanks to the local modern megamart, I have chicken breasts. add some spices and some brined vegetation for a taste twist, a fresh blender mayonnaise, some finely chopped veggies, and serve on a nice ciabatta ..

Background
Chicken salad is any salad that comprises chicken as a main ingredient. In Europe and Asia this may be complemented by any number of dressings, or indeed no dressing at all and the salad constituent can vary from traditional leaves and vegetables, pastas, cous cous to noodles or rice.

In the US it refers to a salad consisting primarily of chopped chicken meat and a fat-based binder such as mayonnaise or salad dressing. Like tuna salad, it is served as a creamy spread, and it is often used for sandwiches. Typically it is made with leftover or canned chicken in the United States.

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Meatless Monday – Asian Slaw

As a complimentary post to my Beef Satay and “How to Grill a Steak” posts, I’ll take nappa cabbage, roasted red peppers, red onion, carrot, along with a dressing of wasabi, soy sauce, fresh ground ginger, finely minced garlic, sesame oil, brown sugar, and rice vinegar, toss all to coat and rest in the fridge to meld flavors for at least an hour.

So why not have a Asian fusion slaw. The lowly, plain, boring cabbage gets rave reviews from the world of nutritionists. Cabbage is relatively cheap yet one of the richest when it comes to protective vitamins. One cup of cabbage contains only around 15 calories and is rich in the following:

• Vitamin A: responsible for the protection of your skin and eyes.
• Vitamin C: an all important anti-oxidant and helps the mitochondria to burn fat.
• Vitamin E: a fat soluble anti-oxidant which plays a role in skin integrity.
• Vitamin B: helps maintain integrity of nerve endings and boosts energy metabolism.

The health benefits of cabbage, which also plays a role in the inhibition of infections and ulcers, are a proven fact. Cabbage extracts have been proven to kill certain viruses and bacteria in the laboratory setting. Cabbage boosts the immune system’s ability to produce more antibodies. Cabbage provides high levels of iron and sulfur, minerals that work in part as cleansing agents for the digestive system.

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Roasted Beet and Apple Salad

Since I have produced a post on roasting beets, a post on using said beets in needed. I had intended to try a beet risotto with black garlic, similar to the offering at MTG, but since the weather is going to be quite warm perhaps a nice cools crisp salad.

Crisp tart apples are counterpointed by sweet and smooth roasted beets with the creamy earthiness of a Stilton cheese.

The beet (Beta vulgaris) is a plant in the Chenopodiaceae family which is now included in Amaranthaceae family. It is best known in its numerous cultivated varieties, the most well known of which is the purple root vegetable known as the beetroot or garden beet. However, other cultivated varieties include the leaf vegetables chard and spinach beet, as well as the root vegetables sugar beet, which is important in the production of table sugar, and mangelwurzel, which is a fodder crop.

The usually deep-red roots of garden beet are eaten boiled either as a cooked vegetable, or cold as a salad after cooking and adding oil and vinegar. A large proportion of the commercial production is processed into boiled and sterilised beets or into pickles. In Eastern Europe beet soup, such as cold borsch, is a popular dish. Yellow-coloured garden beets are grown on a very small scale for home consumption.

Beetroot can be peeled, steamed, and then eaten warm with butter as a delicacy; cooked, pickled, and then eaten cold as a condiment; or peeled, shredded raw, and then eaten as a salad. Pickled beets are a traditional food of the American South. It is also common in Australia and New Zealand for pickled beetroot to be served on a hamburger.

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