Salad Frenzy #Molkosanberry

I have been participating in the Molkosan Berry "21 days to a happier tummy" challenge and today is day 14 . Before the challenge, I had never heard of Molkosan Berry but now I know that it's is a unique lacto-fermented whey product that works to improve our natural pH balance. And I have to say that this Molkosan Berry is already starting to make me feel great.

So far I've had Molkosan Berry stirred into smoothies and apple cider and both drinks have tasted great. But because Molkosan Berry is a mix of sweetness and tartness, I thought it might be the perfect ingredient for a new salad vinaigrette. But don't just trust me, try it for yourself!

Thai One On

I never thought I'd be one of those girls that could order a salad for dinner and be satisfied. And, to be fair, normally I'm not satisfied. Normally I'm still hungry after eating just a salad.

But the salad I'm sharing today is different. It's full of Asian flavour, filling because of the peanuts, and incredibly healthy so you don't feel bad going back for seconds or even thirds.

Ok, so maybe I ate a lot of the salad and that's why I was full.... But I swear, it's a good one!

How Do You #Herbamare?

I am a big fan of anything that means I have an easy (but still delicious) cooking experience and Herbamare recently gave me samples of their products to prove to me that using their natural sea salt infused with organic herbs and veggies was a great way for me to achieve that experience.

I've tried all three flavours now - original, zesty, and sodium free - and it's been the Zesty Herbamare that has spoken most loudly to me. I tried Zesty Herbamare in a Healthy Caesar and that inspired me to make my own salad version of the delicious Canadian drink, a Caesar Salad with Salmon.

Thai-ed Up

After I get home from work I have had days where I am completely exhausted. It's hot out, I've had a busy day, or I just don't feel like cooking. But I usually want to eat something healthy, so I'm not ordering a pizza.

Those are days I hope I remember this Peanut Butter Thai Noodle Salad recipe. This dish is no-cook, quick, healthy, and yummy. Plus it makes enough for leftovers for the next night and that's always a plus - if the dish is good!

Berry Nice Dressing

They say the best things in life are free? I say the best things in life are homemade, especially salad dressing.

I have bought many a bottle of salad dressing, though usually to use as a marinade or when I'm rushing to a backyard party, and I am almost never satisfied with what comes in the bottle. Store bought salad dressing is usually a little thick, a little too salty or sweet, and just not right. Homemade dressing takes seconds to mix together and tastes however you want it to taste.

Try my new go-to summer salad dressing, Strawberry Poppy Seed. It tastes as good as it looks and it's all natural!

The New Tuna Salad

To continue my week of celebrating chia seeds, I created a really quick and tasty salad featuring my new Chia Salad Dressing. I never used to get completely full after eating only a salad for dinner, but my previous thinking changed when I dove into this salad with a salad dressing full of chia seeds and a lovely piece of seared tuna. 

Check out my recipe for Seared Tuna Salad with Chia Dressing below!

Ch-Ch-Ch Chia!

I had more than one chia pet growing up and when I first heard that people were eating chia seeds, I just couldn't imagine why. Chia pets were a fun things to play with but I was always told to not play with my food, so I was going to think about eating chia seeds.

Now I wish I started eating chia sooner because I love the stuff. I love chia so much that I am dedicating this whole week on Delish in a Dish to chia seeds. I've got a few fun recipes planned, but today is all about my Chia Salad Dressing.

If my Chia Salad Dressing recipe is reminiscent of the popular creamy poppy seeds dressings, it's because that's where the idea for this recipe came from. I love poppy seed dressings but know that there are way more health benefits in chia seeds so I decided to swap the seeds and I loved the end product.

Ready for my recipe? Read on to make it yourself!

Spring Salad

Tomorrow is April 1 and I'm hoping that the nice weather I've been experiencing is no April Fool's Day joke. I've been loving the sunny, flower filled, gorgeous days so much that I've already started having a few summer salad dinners. And, boy, so those dinners make me happy!

I know I'm in one of the few cities in Canada that can say spring has arrived, but I think that one bite of this spring salad will begin to convince even those on the frozen east coast that spring is on it's way.

Sesame Slaw

Did anyone else forget that there are only 28 days in February and it's March 1 today? I did and now I suddenly feel like I've lost a couple of days. I hate feeling rushed because it makes me make mistakes. When I'm rushing and cooking, I always seem to cut or almost cut myself. When I'm rushing at work, everything always seems to take longer because I need to do things twice. And when I'm rushing when I'm trying to get out the door, something will always be forgotten at home.

But there are a few rare occasions where something good has come from rushing. One of those occasions is preparing dinner. I now have a few quick and easy recipes that I almost always have all the ingredients for in my pantry, fridge, or freezer. One of those recipes is my Greek Chickpea Salad and another is the new slaw recipe that I'm going to share today.

I love to serve this Sesame Slaw with a simple piece of baked fish but it's also great with take out or frozen pizza or even a grilled cheese sandwich. It just makes food feel more like a meal.

Mexican Green Goddess Dressing

Farmer's Markets are getting a little sad now. Oh there are still lots of delicious squashes, beets, and carrots, but the warm ripe tomatoes and happy little bundles of herbs are really thin these days. So, in honour of the warm summer days we've enjoyed, I'm giving a summer salad one last hurrah.

This weekend, when I'm planning for Thanksgiving, I'll start enjoying thoughts of roasted root veggies more. Today, I'll be enjoying a cerveza with my Mexican Green Goddess Salad! 

Read on for the chasing the soon-to-be-winter blues away recipe!

Super Salad

If you're someone who thinks that there is something about a salad that says diet food, you just haven't tried one of my salads. I don't mean that my salads are high in fat, I mean that my salads have enough oomph, flavour, and substance to leave you feeling full longer. 

And since I've paired today's salad with one of my favourite treats, green onion pancakes, it left me feeling full for a very long time. This feeling of being super full may have been because I had two helpings, but who's to say? I think that when a salad is that good, you should always have seconds! 

Beet It, Stains

I love eating beets. They can be sweet, earthy, or pickled and they add a beautiful rich hue to my plates. But I don't love the stains they leave when one when accidentally falls off my fork, tumbles down my blouse, and lands on my pants. In fact, I hate beet stains.

But I've learned how best to go about beating beet stains, and before I share one of the best beet salad recipes I've ever had with you, I'm going to share a couple of tips about getting rid of beet stains.

I've tried two methods and they've both worked pretty well. The first method sounds a little crazy, but I use it if I'm out of my favourite stain remover. Just soak a piece of bread in cold water and use it to sponge away the beet stains, then wash the clothes as usual. My second method is to run the fabric under cold water right away, pretreat the stain with my favourite stain remover, and then wash as usual. I'm always interested in learning about new ways to get rid of stains, so if you have other tested ideas, I'd love to hear about them.

I'm going to post my tips about getting rid of beet stains on Resolve's new Resolve Tip Exchange website. It's a great new site to learn about getting rid of stains, all from readers like you and me!

One of the ways that Resolve is encouraging us to enter tips is by offering 12 weekly prizes of $250 and a grand prize of $5000! Each week we can submit a tip to earn a ballot in the draw for the prizes and that's sure got me thinking of tips I'd like to share!

So far I've sent in tips for removing butter and red wine from clothes, but you'll have to head over to Resolve Tip Exchange to find out those tips! For now, since you don't have to worry about permanently staining your clothes from beets, read on for an amazingly tasty Beet and Carrot Salad recipe!

Crazy Ingredient Challenge - Avocados and Caramel?

If I thought that last month's Crazy Ingredient Challenge of pairing cauliflower and chocolate was hard, this month's challenge of pairing avocados and caramel took it to another level. But I brought out my big guns too and I think that the dish I came up with was both delicious and featured avocados and caramel really well.

At first I wanted to make the infamous avocado chocolate pudding that I've seen all over the Internet and I thought I would drizzle a little homemade caramel sauce on top. But then I decided to really stretch myself and make a savoury dish that really let caramel shine. That how I came up with my Creamy Avocado Salad with Caramel Almonds.

Since I'm still thinking about the avocado chocolate pudding, I know it's something I'm going to make soon. So if anyone is wishing I made that instead, just wait because it might appear on Delish in a Dish soon! For now, read on for my yummy Creamy Avocado Salad with Caramel Almonds recipe. 

Local Canadian Food Heroes

This month's Canadian Food Experience Project challenge was a tough one. First I had to come up with who my local Canadian Food Hero was and then I had to come up with a recipe to share from that hero.

For me the challenge wasn't coming up with a hero, it was choosing just one! I go to my local farmer's market as often as I can to buy fresh veggies and Artisan products. I also love going to cooking classes in my city and learning from culinary instructors always makes me excited because I know I'll be able to bring home new techniques. Finally I love shopping at boutique food stores and promoting buying local. If all those people aren't food heroes, I don't know what is.

I finally came up with a duo of heroes and I know anyone who's visited Silk Road or attended a Heidi Fink cooking class will agree that I made the right decision. Silk Road is a local Victoria BC tea store and Heidi Fink shares her food knowledge through cooking classes, local Victoria China Town tours, and has also created one of my favourite Silk Road tea salad dressings.

I've used Heidi's salad dressing in a quick and yummy Asian stir fry. The sweet, smokey, and savoury salad dressing makes each bite of this stir fry amazing - and it's all due to the beautiful Silk Road Lapsang Souchong tea.

Grilling Caesar

I think I actually can now say that I am a big fan of grilled lettuce. I used to think that lettuce was something I'd never like warm, it's like cucumber and should always be kept cool and crispy. But now that I've tried a second recipe for a grilled salad, I know I am officially a fan. 

My first grilled salad recipe was for Iceburg lettuce wedges with a ranch dressing, and it was delicious, but my second grilled salad recipe is awesome too. It's a grilled Caesar salad and who doesn't love Caesar salad? 

Caesar Pasta Salad

Caesar salad and I are great friends. We often hang out together on a warm summer night with a glass of cool white wine. But this summer I've gotten a little bored with my old friend and decided that she needed a little sprucing up, so I introduced a little pasta, veggies, and beans into the mix. And talk about hitting it off, this salad is amazing. 

My favourite thing about this salad, besides the Caesar dressing, are the zucchini ribbons I tossed in. They were lightly heated with the warm pasta, so they wilted slightly and were warm. I know I'm going to toss them in to a lot more pasta salads too. 

Martha Madness

Even in Martha's darkness days, I was a fan. I was never I fan of what she did to get into those darkest days, but I was always a fan of her cooking because Martha makes good, honest food. 

I love Martha's Meatless cookbook. I have flagged a ton of recipes to try and I know that even if you're not keen in eating meatless everyday, that you'd love a lot of her recipes in Meatless too. 

Today I am sharing my spin on Martha's Arugula, Potato, and Green Bean Salad with Creamy Walnut Dressing. I've substituted asparagus for Martha's green beans and changed her dressing a little too by adding a little curry to the party with my Curried Citrus Yogurt Sauce, but both options are as tasty as can be. :) 

Hay and Straw Salad

First off, don't worry because this salad doesn't actually contain straw or hay. I just am borrowing the term from a pasta dish that contains long strips of regular and spinach pasta because both the pasta dish and my salad have long strips of bicolored edibles that look like straw and hay. 

Secondly, if you've read Smitten Kitchen, you might have seen something that looks a wee bit like this salad before. However, I've made my version entirely different by taking out the original yummy salad dressing, adding in a new fabulous Asian Pineapple salad dressing instead, and changing a few other bits as well. I can not put into words how delicious this salad dressing is other to simply yell out the word YUM! 

Ok, I'm getting hungry. Let's not waste another moment, read on for the recipe! 

Homemade Ranch Dressing

As a teenager, I used to babysit for a boy who loved ranch dressing on everything. He dipped anything and everything into it and I'm pretty sure he would have drank it if no one was watching. 

I'm not as big a fan as he was of ranch dressing, but I do love it. I just don't like the idea of pouring ready made dressing into my food. I'm convinced that the preservatives and sodium are just too high for me to enjoy it. 

Now I've discovered a recipe for ranch dressing that has no preservatives and tastes amazing. I've tested it on grilled wedges of iceberg lettuce (yes, you read that right!) and every single leaf of the lettuce was gobbled up. 

Save Room for Salad

I love salad, but I usually think of salads as a side dish. And I don't usually get too excited about side dishes. You know what I mean right? A side dish is just something that sits on the side of your plate, beside the main part of the meal. 

Well last night I made this salad and that's all I ate. It might be true that I was hungry and hasn't eaten a lot of veggies yesterday, but I think this salad was also just plain delicious. And the dressing is like what my Nana always made for a potato salad; any memory of her always makes me smile.