Eating healthy – a photo journal

After a vacation of heavy meat & sweet eating, I’ve gotten back into my salad loving ways (& feeling better for it).

Throwing in a picture of my kitchen & some new presents (cutting board & pepper mill) in it that make me very happy.

Golden Goddess Vinaigrette

Ingredients:
Organic Coconut Oil
Olive Oil
Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV)
Nutritional Yeast
Turmeric
Sweet Hot Mustard
Honey
Chia Seeds
Lemon Juice
Bee Pollen

Directions:
Add equal parts ACV, coconut & olive oils. Add other ingredients to taste. Shake & enjoy!

#saladalldayeveryday – pt. 2 flipagram

I love when my plate is covered by a rainbow!

Eating healthy has be come a way of life for me. My relationship with food is changing as I grow & mature as a person. I love the energy I gain from good eating & hope that I can add more healthy habits into my daily life.

#saladalldayeveryday

I’m obsessed with salad. It’s my go-to meal. I feel like everything is healthier when you pair it with a salad. Like my dinner this evening, I only gave myself a spoonful of starch, with a modest portion of meat, surrounded by vegetables.

I loved this salad, goat cheese & honey / goat cheese & apple & honey mustard wrapped up in prosciutto, and then put in the broiler for a few minutes.

Constructing a salad (yes another post on salad lol)

So one of the things that should be known about me is that I can fixate on flavours & will eat them multiple days in a row. So with that, you must know that I’m still obsessing about this salad…

which I used as the inspiration for this salad last night.

Tonight I decided to do a “jumbled” version to more closely mimic the plate I got in Vegas at The Cut. I decided to take pics of every single step so that I could do another post on salad arranging but this time on free form as opposed to organized piles.

I have a ton of alfalfa sprouts so I wanted to make sure to use a lot of those, but didn’t want to put them on top & obstruct the view of all the ingredients.

So I decided to add them first, using a snake like pattern on the plate with the thought to add different greens in the curves.
Then I added the arugula (my current favourite green, absolutely love them with poached eggs).

Next came the beet greens (I contemplated adding thin slices of beets as well but thought that I would just stick to using the greens & save the beets for roasting).

I cut the leaf part away from the stem & washed them separately. I cut the leaves in a thick chiffonade, & the stems on the bias.

Then came the watercress that I bought this evening.

Then 3 cheeses…

A soft local goat cheese, a chive onion cream cheese & a honey goat cheese.

Then came the fruit!

Forelle pear slices, red seedless grapes quartered, yellow tomatoes quartered (similar shapes, similar cuts to keep things from looking too disorganized) & blood orange segments.

I added a bit of coconut rice & miso glazed salmon leftovers from the restaurant where I work. For dressing I used some lime passion fruit vinaigrette from work & the rest of my vinaigrette from last night’s salad.

A close up because it looks so good!

Deconstructed: Salad ~ memories of Vegas

I prefer salad composed of different piles of stuff as opposed to all jumbled because I love putting my individual bites together, creating different flavour profiles with each forkful & I find the organization more visually pleasing.
Had a salad last night with arugula, blood orange & goat cheese, & it made me think of this salad…

(which is a roasted red & yellow beet salad with goat cheese & blood oranges from The Cut = my favourite restaurant in Vegas).

So tonight my salad just had to have some beets to pair with the blood orange/arugula/goat cheese flavour combo. Unfortunately I didn’t have any roasted or pickled beets but I did have the beet greens which I used raw two ways to add in beet flavour.

Clockwise from top right: arugula with beet stems, avocado with pink salt & bee pollen & Bragg’s sea kelp seasoning & pepper, then beet greens with yellow tomatoes & chia seeds, alfalfa sprouts with blood orange segments & honey goat cheese, & sliced forelle pear in the center. Vinaigrette: mustard, lemon, poppy seed dressing, buffalo sauce, & tangerine juice.

It was so yummy!! Tomorrow night I’m roasting beets! (Along with some Brussel sprouts) & will be adding to them to salads next week. What are you craving/making this weekend?

Food Art: Salad arranging

I was asked today to go into more detail about how I make my salads look so good… And I’m going to attempt to explain my process, but like anything creative it is hard to put into words because it is made with “feeling”.
Step one is plate selection. I prefer solid colours over patterns, and square plates over round. (Of course there are exceptions to every rule & I’ll show you a couple examples).

So tonight’s salad… It all began with a look in my fridge at what could be combined with a couple items I purchased on the way home. I bought chive & onion cream cheese, alfalfa sprouts, & “everything” ritz.

I used arugula I had in the fridge as my salad base, I like to bunch it up in one corner on my square plates, then I added red pepper & caramelized onion hummus to my plate, & blood orange segments & alfalfa sprouts to my arugula.

With circle plates I tend to pile my greens in the center & my various toppings around them.
For tonight’s salad, I thought yellow tomatoes would be a lovely counter point to the red flesh of the blood orange.

& since no salad is ruined by adding cheese (in this case honey goat cheese) or avocado… I added both!

Some exceptions to my plain plate preference (it’s funny because they were both taken at my friends house where I take food over & we picnic in her yard lol)

I finished off my dinner plate with the cream cheese, ritz & a small portion of chicken stew from last night (although its mostly veg this evening lol).

I like to dress my avocado with a dash of something, & tonight it was Bragg’s sea kelp seasoning, pink Himalayan salt & pepper. Used a bit of leftover vinaigrette to dress my salad (buffalo sauce, honey mustard, lemon, & Bragg’s ACV) from last night & added poppy seed dressing & a bit more vinegar.

I’m also inspired by people I follow on IG, I highly recommend you do some searching. I follow a lot of vegan/vegetarian people but that’s because I think colourful fruits & veggies are more photogenic.

One of my favourite accounts, I love the way she arranges things on her plate. So neat & organized. The fanning technique is to die for!

I tell people that I make my plate like I would a painting, trying to create a visual balance as well as moments that spark interest ( by using contrast with either texture or colour).

Fresh plates, fresh start

I have been painting my plates with fresh ingredients, hoping to get back to the healthy “high” that I was on before. I miss my farmers market, can’t wait for the fall. Then the good local produce reappears.
I’ve been making due with imported produce, organic when I can find it.

Salads for dinner…

Salads for breakfast! Nothing says a weekend breakfast/brunch like a ton of different fresh yummy nibbles. Love having extra time to make my plate full & pretty. Really enjoying the big white squares that my mom gave me, allows the food to really pop. Wish I lived somewhere where changing home furnishings was easy. I’d redecorate every season, changing colours & focal points often to keep a fresh vibe to my home. At least I can “decorate” my plates with beautiful fresh food!! Hope I can achieve my health goals in the near future.

Absolutely Epic Salad

I made an absolutely epic salad for dinner tonight. So good I can’t wait to have it again for lunch, so good I had to share!

Calling it my “Southern” Peach Salad. Baby kale & arugula leaves, with 2 kinda of goat cheese (one local, one imported), 2 kinds of peaches (one local, one imported), pickled beets, & sweet & salty glazed nuts. So yummy!!! & filling, I didn’t even finish my BBQ chicken lol.
Homemade vinaigrette includes: creamy poppy seed dressing, buffalo wing sauce, ACV (Bragg’s organic), coconut oil (a tsp), nutritional yeast, Bragg’s sea kelp seasoning, bee pollen, squeeze of lemon, drop of honey.
Drool! Is it lunchtime yet?? To tomorrow’s version I’ve added sliced blackberries & a splash of OJ to the vinaigrette. How will you make it yours??