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?

A night downtown

We both love Vegas and no matter where the AF takes us we know we want to end up here (maybe not permanently but for a long time). I know now we're going to get pcs orders within the year, now that I've put it out there for the universe. But we'll be back here.

One thing we dont like about Vegas is its lack of a true downtown where you can around, shop, have a coffee, a beer, etc. Every major city has one and we don't. I know we have the strip etc but there really isn't the down to earth jeans and flip flops bar area, or the places where you can just randomly walk around and explore new stores and restaurants.

The Andersens (Jeff was Charlie's roommate in UPT and are our business partners now) decided to get a babysitter and go out and invited us to join them. SOMETHING MADE CHARLIE GO OUT!!! Thanks Jeff and Allison!  Although it's not the downtown we crave, it was fun and different. There are definitely interesting people there. As we were walking around the arts district Charlie made certain that we agreed on private school for our future children :-)

It's first Friday so they had all the local artists at the arts district. We saw this and thought my parents would like it for their house with the copper.

What do you think mom?

I had a very pink drink that was blood orange and something with champagne:


Picture came out good so I wanted one of me and my man:

Something was funny but I don't know what. Look at what a gentleman holding my jacket!


I like this picture because you can see the Stratosphere in the background.

There was a car show type thing and this van was just too funny:


We wanted to go to fremont and do the zip line but we ended up eating at Hugo's Cellar and got stuffed and then Jeff and Allison had to go home for the babysitter and me and Charlie have to wake up early to go hiking with Nikki at Red Rock. The restaurant is very cute and delicious and although it's not inexpensive, it includes sides and an AMAZING salad and chocolate covered strawberries for dessert.

Here is a picture of Jeff and Allison w/their food - Jeff got the smaller of the two options for his steak and I don't think this picture really does it justice.


I was stuffed although my portion was much smaller, I had a seafood trio so Charlie helped and I only had a bite of his steak, so I felt okay. I also had a total vegan lunch so I felt better. Last night I put veggie ground in the slow cooker with several of the green chilis the Mountains left us, one whole onion, tomato paste and two cans of water, one miller light, 1 tbs cumin, 2 tbs chili powder. Cook on low all night. I added one can of black beans and one can of kidney beans today. Yum!


Not sure it's the most aesthetically pleasing picture but it's chili, come on! Katy came over to help finish the bookshelves and she and I couldn't tell it was vegan, although Charlie claims he could. Maybe next time I'll add bacon grease. (oh wait......)