Berry and yogurt salad dressing

Here is a super easy salad dressing that I have been making every day.

Ingredients:

6 oz berries

4 oz homemade soy yogurt

1/2 Tablespoon balsamic or apple cider vinegar (optional)

1 T flax-chia seeds (optional--actually tastes better without)

Blend in a blender.  Pour on your salad.  I make a huge salad for lunch with lettuce, spinach, kale or arugula, maybe a little raw cabbage, mushrooms, onion, red bell pepper, bean sprouts.   that's been my winter salad anyway.   I fill a big bowl and then dump the dressing on.  mmmmm.

Salad Dressing Ice cubes

I don't eat much salad dressing and to make a batch usually requires enough ingredients to make the blender work which is then usually too much for me at one time.  So the solution is to freeze them into ice cubes!  This worked well.  I used for inspiration StraightupFood's vinaigrette salad dressings.

I did this a couple of months ago and made 3 different dressings and then I froze them into ice cubes.  I logged the recipes in cronometer so I have the measurements for everything except the water.   Here's what went into each:

Strawberry vinaigrette:
3/4 lb strawberries
1 Tbsp cider vinegar
1 medjool date
1 tsp chia seeds
little bit of onion (1/2 oz)
water?  maybe none

blend in the blender.

Hemp mustard date lemon dressing
1-2 oz lemon juice
2 Tbsp mustard (no salt)
1 medjool date
1 oz hemp hearts
don't recall how much water.

Orange mustard dressing
1.2 cup orange juice
1 oz hemp hearts
1 Tbsp mustard

The amounts of liquid and hemp hearts don't matter that much--you can do anywhere from a 1:4 to 1:8 ratio.  Just be careful with the mustard and vinegar--start with less then add to taste.  And any fruit will work, and you can use mustard or vinegar as you wish.

I didn't take pictures at the time, but here is one from today where I just decided to clean out the fridge and combine them all together!

tomato dressing

I want to use up the rest of my canned garden tomatoes before the fresh ones arrive!  This makes a good dressing.

Ingredients:
1 16 oz can tomatoes
1-2 Tbsp hemp hearts
some scallions or radishes
fresh herbs or dried

Blend the tomatoes and hemp hearts in a blender until smooth.  Add in the other ingredients and pulse until they are chopped some but not totally blended in.  Right now I've got cilantro, chives and dill in the garden so that's what I'm using for herbs.

I served this up over a bed of lettuce and jicama.  It was good!  That's grapes on the left for dessert.

This week's food

As I mentioned last week, I now have two part-time jobs and an ambitious exercise schedule, so I don't want to do much food prep during the week.  I cooked and froze this weekend so I think all I have to do every day is make a couple of salads (only two ingredients: lettuce and red bell pepper), cut and peel a pound of carrots for snacking, and throw a sweet potato in the oven.  Here is what I did:

Yesterday I made a big pot of greens, onion and mushroom.  I still have frozen kale and collards from the garden in big freezer bags.  I cook those up in the pressure cooker and dish out into single servings to freeze (there were 7).   I also opened a 1 lb bag of beans to soak overnight.

Today I cooked up the beans in one pot, and cooked up a bunch of veggies in another--onions, beets, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower---then combined them and put them into 11 bowls to freeze (left 2 out for tomorrow).  I also made a big batch of salad dressing that I put into 5 small bell jars to freeze (left 1 out for tomorrow).   The dressing was fun.  I used 2 cans of tomatoes, and some onion, garlic, cilantro, flax and chia seeds, blended that all in the blender, and poured into the bell jars.  The fun part was I added different seasonings to each jar.  I don't remember exactly but I put something like cumin and chipotle powder in one, curry and singapore seasoning in another, cumin and chili powder and cajun seasoning in another, Italian and Bouqui garni in another, and garam masala and curry in another.  I thought of adding seasonings to the beans and veggies but they are so flavorful on their own, I didn't want to.  Here are the salad dressings with the extremely messy kitchen in the background.  I had a lot of cleanup after that cooking:

So breakfast will be baked sweet potato and greens after exercise; lunch and dinner will be salad and beans and veggies; and carrot sticks for snacks.   No fruit on the menu this week.  I had a delicious grapefruit today but otherwise, am more in the mood for sweet potatoes than fruit this week.

Edited later:  This dressing was awful after it was frozen and thawed!   Flax and chia in a dressing don't freeze and thaw well.  It gets all clumpy.

Meal plans, a salad dressing, and some thoughts on eating out

1)  I took a second part-time job, which I'm excited about, but I'm going to be busy now and I need to be efficient with my food prep.   Here's my idea for a plan:   Cook a big pot of soup on the weekend and split into 5-7 bowls for the week (at least 5 for the weekdays).   Cook a big pot of greens and onions and mushrooms (I still have lots of kale and collards in the freezer from the garden) and split into 5-7 bowls for the week.  Freeze some of them for the later days of the week.  Make a batch of soy yogurt (1 qt of soy milk conveniently makes 7 servings).  Then each weekday I just have to prepare breakfast, a big salad, and carrots and celery for snacks  It will look something like today's food:

Breakfast was the first organic strawberries of the season from California!  --along with some frozen (thawed in the microwave) blueberries, mango and cherries topped with home-made soy yogurt.  it was excellent!

Morning snack was carrots and celery:

Lunch was my favorite salad right now:  lettuce, a little raw spinach, red bell pepper, frozen corn (thawed), edamame (optional, didn't have any today), and "salsa salad dressing" (at left):

2)  Here's the salad dressing recipe.
Ingredients:
1 can tomatoes
1 Tbsp seeds (my mixture is flax, sesame, chia and hemp hearts)
small amount of raw onion (really small for me, about 1-2 Tbsp chopped)
1/2 garlic clove or less
cilantro (to taste, optional)
1 tsp cumin
1 Tbsp high-quality balsamic vinegar (sweet tasting), or 1 oz lime juice
sprinkle of chipotle powder

Blend part of the tomatoes and juice, onion, seeds, garlic at high speed.  Then add the rest of the tomatoes and cilantro and seasonings and cilantro and just blend for a few seconds to coarsely chop.
Enjoy!

afternoon snack is more carrots and celery (my favorite snack and the carrots are one of the other few local foods available in Wisconsin this time of year).

Dinner is soup over lettuce and spinach, topped with soy yogurt.

I forgot to snap a picture of my bowl of cooked broccoli.  I really love refrigerated cooked broccoli.  That is cooked, then cooled.  It's sweet tasting.

3)  Here are some thoughts about restaurant eating.  It is still a problem for me.  This is because I imagine that people think I'm weird and crazy on the one hand which makes me feel weird and crazy, and on the other hand I don't want to compromise my diet just to please others (thought I will compromise to please myself unfortunately).  I don't want to eat oil and salt, which makes most restaurant food off-limits.  My strategy lately has been to order a salad with no dressing and top it with contraband that I bring into the restaurant.  I had some success last week when an old friend visited.  I enjoyed my salads and was happy.  But afterwards, I wanted to pig out and go off plan, partly because I used to party with this guy, eating, drinking and being merry.  And I did pig out on nuts and go off plan a little bit on chips and hummus.  It's ironic that I behave in the restaurant and then misbehave afterwards.   I had better success yesterday when I was out with some good friends that I don't have a history of partying with.  We were at a Mexican restaurant and I ordered a plate of lettuce and tomato and avocado (which was quite good and nicely plated), and I added some split pea soup (that's just what I would have had anyway).  It was really good.  Now the real success was that I had almost no urges to pig out or go off plan when I got home (maybe just a slight pig-out urge but it was easy to ignore).  Maybe this is because I had earlier apologized to my friends for being so weird about food and they said, you're okay, you're normal, and anyway, what's normal and who wants to be normal in this screwed up society that values consumerism and selfishness etc? And that made me feel better somehow. I'm going to have a lot more social events in the next few month,s as I'm on the search team for a minister at my congregation and we will be wining (maybe) and dining candidates for several weekend-long visits.  My desire not to compromise is bigger than my desire not to be weird, but I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable and I don't want to make myself uncomfortable either.  I like my salad plan and think I can make it work.