Shredded Brussel Sprout Salad With Mandarins, Cranberries, and Almonds

I've been asked for Brussel Sprouts recipes 3 times in about 2 weeks so decided to post this, even though I have about 238473874 things to catch up on. Like that I am posting from Italy, sitting on a couch next to my hubby :-)

My little sis from DG, Caroline, posted a shredded Brussel Sprout salad on her blog a while ago, and I have been making them since. One of my go to salads is my mom's apple cider "slaw" with dill and pine nuts (it gets gobbled up every time I make it). I figured, Brussel Sprouts are just little cabbages, so why not? I love the salad, but not as much as I love roasted Brussel Sprouts, or these yummy ones. It's a close second though!

Ingredients:

-about 30 brussel sprouts, run through the food processor's shredder/grater thing, not in the bowl with the blade (or you can shred them with a knife if you want to cry for an hour), or buy pre-shredded (trader jos baby!)

-1/2 cup of dried cranberries

-1/2 cup of toasted nuts (almonds, pine nuts, walnuts)

-1/2 cup of canned mandarin oranges

- lemon dressing, recipe below (or you can use store bought raspberry vinagraite or whatever you want)

FYI, that's our wedding pattern, I love it :-) Wanted something casual or fancy. And I think it's pretty timeless. 

Moving on.

Toss everything together with the following:

-Juice of 2 lemons

-1 tablespoon of sugar or equivalent of splenda (or 1 tablespoon of honey/agave etc)

-2 teaspoons of minced garlic

-1/4 cup of olive oil

You can really use any acid instead of the lemon (apple cider vinegar or red wine vinegar would be great choices). You could also use pomegranate seeds instead of the cranberries! Hmmmm I want to make that next.

Ciao to all!

A hotel room meal

Cravings: a real meal, not a sandwich! When you're living in a hotel room, most of your meals are sandwiches. Ughhhhh.

Disclaimer: I wrote this about 5 days ago but could not post it due to no internet access.

These posts are going to be very all over the place since so much has happened and my connection is so spotty. I have many pictures and do not remember the order of everything, especially since half are on my camera and half are on my iphone!

What I do know is that last Friday I decided to make chicken in the microwave. Charlie's flight was grilling but we wanted to go see The Avengers (base movie theater was showing it), so we didn't have time to grill. The result was mediocre, but mostly due to lack of seasoning. The chicken actually cooked decently.

I bought a package of chicken "tenders" - basically breast strips w/o fat or skin chopped into thinner slices.

The recipe can be found here.

Along with my microwave chicken, I had a salad. 

Charlie made the point that I don't have to buy all of my salad ingredients and prepare them myself, but that we live in a country where they actually do that for you. Wow, I have been overworking myself! I bought one of those salads that has all the ingredients in little pouches, and it was delicious! All I needed was a fork and bowl. And my mouth.

Look everyone - I need my scissors, I am so happy I brought them! (For other things you may need when living in a hotel room, please reference this post).

I also had a brown rice microwavable packet. You literally just open the container and microwave for one minute. I usually buy these at trader jos or costco, but found these at the commissary and they were great as well.

I hope if you are living in a hotel room, that this meal has given you some inspiration to eat something more than a sandwich! It can be done :-)

Mom's spinach/strawberry salad

Craving: Mom's spinach salad, of course

My mom is such a creative cook. In Israel you have very creative ideas for vegetable dishes and salads, and salad is basically served with EVERY meal. We would always have about 4 creative veggie dishes at a table. I get so upset with pot lucks that are all pasta based. Let's get creative people! It's not too difficult to make a side dish that is nutritious, creative, and delicious.

 A typical dinner at my house growing up was a fish or chicken, a whole grain, and let's say, 3 veggie side dishes. 

These are examples of dishes we had every night for dinner:

-sauteed green beans with spicy sauce

-broiled broccoli with soy sauce

-apple cider cabbage slaw with toasted pine nuts

-watermelon, feta, and mint salad with raspberry vinaigrette

-red cabbage slaw with pineapple

-steamed sweet carrots with sesame seeds

-"waldorf" salad - aka apple, celery, walnuts, pineapple

-roasted beets with balsamic vinegar

-eggplant with tahini sauce

-sweet potatoes stuffed with roasted grapes and goat cheese, topped with honey

and many more! Please be creative with your veggies, it's not that difficult.

This weekend Charlie has some of his best friends in town visiting for a bachelor party weekend. One of his best friends, Anthony, is having a baby in August, so he wanted to do the weekend before then. I cooked up a bunch of food for them and decided to make some healthy stuff as well (and then I ate a burger myself!).

I made two salads, both of which were delicious. When you have 4 big guys and you have one burger left but you finish a salad, you know it's just that good!

I forgot to snap a picture until we had already devoured some of it, but it still looks okay:


Here is her recipe for strawberry spinach salad:

Ingredients:
-1/2 lb spinach leaves
-1/2 pint of strawberries, sliced
-1/2 cup (i just eyeballed this and used handfsuls) of candied pecans
-2 tbs sugar (you can use splenda)
-2 tbs white vinegar
-1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
-2 tsp sesame seeds
-1 tsp poppy seeds
-1/4 medium onion, grated (you can chop it finely)
-1/4 tsp paprika (optional)

Directions:
1. wash the spinach and mix with the strawberries.
2. In a separate bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients except the oil. Slowly whisk the oil in so it emulsifies.
3. Mix the dressing into the spinach/strawberry mix, and toss with the pecans.

Enjoy!


Sidenote: do you have an ingredient that you always seem to buy, and then one day you find you have 4 open versions of it? One day my mom and I found like 4 bottles of white vinegar in her house!

Well, yesterday my mom went to fresh and easy and asked if I needed anything and I told her hamburger meat (for the guys...and me), and candied walnuts. Well after I made the salad, I went to put the walnuts in the pantry and found three packets! Woops. Katy is over and I just had her take a picture, in front of my finished wreaths!




Questions:
1. What creative foods will you challenge yourself to make this week?
2. Is there a food you always tend to overbuy?

Pizza success (and laughing so hard you may tinkle)

Pizza was a success! I made two different kinds, both Vegan. The crust was REALLY good, although next time I would like to add one more tsp of salt and one tablespoon of honey. I'll post the recipe after this in a separate post.

I rolled it out into two smaller pies, and baked it for about 20 minutes at 425 degrees.


Pie number 1: Onions caramelized in balsamic and zaatar, topped withs sliced tomatoes. I added the avocado the last 2 minutes.



Pie number 2. Not as visually appealing. Caramelized onions with sliced pear and "vegan" mozzarella cheese. I usually would use fresh mozzarella but I made this at my parents house.


Oh! Their neighbor brought sushi and I ate about 4-5 pieces. It was SO GOOD! I asked her if I could come over and have her teach me and she said she'd be glad to.


Here is some of the food from last night:


Adina made a salad, and then a platter with different salad toppings - it had jicama and just awesome things. It was such a cute idea and I am definitely replicating it. I really want to do the same thing but almost like a "seder plate" style, where the different salad mix-ins are in small little dishes.

Here is Maya, the Sal's youngest, with Maya, our youngest:


I went over to Jaren's after dinner with Jessi and she was hanging up her American flag wreath since her husband comes back from deployment this Wednesday:


Clara's new favorite thing is playing with credit cards from your wallet, so I cleaned mine out and brought her a bunch of cards. I also brought her my license that expired forever ago - Clara has a fake id! She was SO happy to get her presents and every few minutes would turn to me and smile and hold one up and say "presents"!




We then made signs, aka Jaren made a sign for Clara (yes there was a joke about why wasn't Clara doing this, 2 year olds these days), Jessi made a work of art for Joe (who comes back in 3 weeks) and I sat on the couch and drank a coke zero and a bag of bugles. I actually did help out by getting different things so Jaren didn't have to get up. Poor thing couldn't lay on her belly to work on the poster. I have quite a hilarious picture of her attempting to but I will not post.

Last night was definitely reminiscent of making signs for big/little week during my sorority days. It really felt like I was with old friends and we could not stop laughing. When a pregnant woman thinks she may pee herself laughing its not that big a deal, but when I almost do, it means you're having a good time!

Jaren will probably kill me but I had to snap a pic of her at one point because her face was bright red from laughing. I don't think you can tell in this pic, but trust me it was.


Hope you all had a weekend that made you laugh so hard you thought you'd pee yourself!