I’m glad you were all so intrigued by Monday’s carrot butter recipe! Sarah brought up a good point – that carrots in a sweet recipe aren’t that foreign of a concept after all… just think of carrot cake. Duh! Why didn’t I think of that? So none of you are allowed to be skeptical of carrot butter any more. Carrot cake in vegan dip form! :)
Today, though, we’ve still got some orange in our food, but it’s not cake (or even carrots). It’s a chopped salad with roasted butternut squash! Mmmm.
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Good morning! Not only am I posting another salad today, but it also has “sweet” in the title… just like Monday’s. I didn’t plan it that way, but sometimes you just need a week full of salads, you know? Especially after a weekend in Vegas.
Can I write about the weekend on a Wednesday? I didn’t have time to do it for Monday’s post, so let’s just go with it, even though it’s hump day.
I was in Vegas this past weekend on my company’s annual trip. Vegas is not really my scene, especially given the 7-hour bus ride each way, but I had a really fantastic time! There was a lot of food, a lot of wine, and a lot of fun bonding time with co-workers. And the weather was also gorgeous, which was a perfect break from the cool temps I’m still not ready for here in northern Utah. But I have to say that the highlight of the weekend was this celebrity sighting:
Just Kody and Janelle out for date night on the strip! If you’ve ever watched Sister Wives, you’ll understand why I was so excited about this. Also, as a side note, I originally posed on Kody’s other side, but he asked me not to stand next to him for the picture. What?! This must be some sort of agreement he has with his wives… bizarre.
Another weekend highlight was actually the batch of Bloody Marys that a co-worker made to enjoy on the bus ride down. I had one (toward the end of the bus ride – not when we left at 6 am!) and I have to say it might be the best Bloody Mary I’ve ever had. I got the recipe from him and, although I’m a very inexpert mixologist, I’m determined to bring it to a blog near you sometime soon!
Anyway, I came back from the weekend with a very full tummy and a very sore throat, and am still digging myself out of the depths of my sleep deprivation. Vegas will do that to a girl! I’m excited to get back to my normal eating, sleeping, and (lack of) drinking routines. This salad, followed by nine hours of sleep, is very much needed!
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My salad brings all the boys to the yard, and they’re like, it’s better than yours…
What? No?
Here is the thing about salad (and blogging about salad): It doesn’t exactly bring all the boys to the yard. You know what I mean? Now blogging about milkshakes, that’s another story.
Despite this unfortunate truth, I’m bringing you a salad today, because this is my blog, and on my blog I get to share the food I like to eat, boys in the yard or no.
Well, like to eat is maybe a strong statement about salad.
To me, salads (and hard workouts, for that matter) are like classic works of literature: you want to have read them (or have eaten or have done them), but you do not want to read, eat or do them in the present tense. No, you want to look into your virtuous past and say “ah yes, I had a salad for lunch” with the same smug satisfaction you would say “ah yes, I’ve read Dostoyevsky.” Rarely could I say with any truthfulness, “I want to eat a salad right now.” (And I’m sorry, but the same goes for reading translations from the Russian.) In reality, I claim to want salad quite often, but it’s because I’m thinking of the present as the future past. And in the future, I will want to have eaten a salad.
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Something very exciting happened in my parents’ town recently: they got a Whole Foods!
The old Johnnie’s Foodmaster near the house I grew up in closed, and the blinking Foodmaster sign was replaced with the big green Whole Foods lettering. This is somewhat sad, as Johnnie’s was a staple in my town and in my life: one of my best high school friends worked there for years while we were in high school and college (and can probably still tell you the code for just about every type of produce), and a band from my high school had a song called “Foomaster,” inspired by the grocery store sign whose D always seemed to be dark.Yep, I have some nostalgia for the old Johnnie’s. But Whole Foods is still a major upgrade.
I visited for the first time in August, after my flights home from our family vacation got messed up and I knew I’d have to go into work the next day in Salt Lake with no food. While wandering around checking out the bulk bins (my favorite section) and comparing the offerings to my Whole Foods at home (the Salt Lake one near me is bigger), I picked out this salad for my lunch the next day. It looked delicious – check out those colors! – and I figured it would be a good way of starting off a little detox after some serious vacation eating.
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Meet my perfect simple summer salad.
You two should be friends.
This salad is certainly no culinary breakthrough, but when it comes to summer produce, sometimes simpler is better. And there is about to be a LOT of summer produce up in here, because this past week’s CSA box was packed to the brim:
I have more lettuce than I know what to do with, along with zucchini, beets, carrots, garlic, green garlic, spring onions, green beans, apricots, and the season’s first corn. Foooooood.
I think the boxes are only going to get more stuffed from here on out. Come August and September, I have no idea how we’re going to eat it all!
For now, I think I’ll try to stuff as much of it as possible into a salad.
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