When I am not feeling up to a big production, I make a hearty salad for dinner. This involves getting together all the veg in the fridge, adding grains or beans, perhaps, and a protein item to balance on top. Recently my protein item of choice has been eggs, either hard boiled or poached. The salad above was the most recent, and Ant accepted this as his one vegetarian meal this fortnight. (Have I told you this? He has stated that he will accept one veggie meal per fortnight, with no rollover of unused meals into the next fortnight!) In the salad at the top of this post I used salad leaves; broccoli, carrots, and onions that I lightly fried together; red quinoa; and two eggs.
Sarah and I made this salad (above) while I was visiting her in Bath. It has quinoa; chard, courgette, and onions that we fried together; some sprouts; and a poached egg on top.
And finally, below is a larger shot of a salad that used to be in the header bar on this blog. There's no grain this time, so I served it with pumpernickel bread.
Most of these salads are very simply dressed with a vinaigrette: a bit more olive oil than vinegar, whisked together with pepper and herbs or spices. Warm salad feels like a good meal: I tend to cook some of the heavier vegetables (in the photo below it was chard, mushrooms, and garlic that were cooked) Quite often the grains or beans are warm and the eggs or chicken or ham on top are usually freshly cooked, or warmed up.
Making a salad like this is healthy, fresh, and easy. Sometimes I do it just to use up all the random things from the veg box that are cluttering up the fridge. There's no set plan to these meals, just toss together everything we have and enjoy!
