Salad

I like to have my lettuce in smaller pieces in my salads. It makes for easier and neater eating.

I also like to have a little stuff in my salad. Stuff like tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, broccoli, hard-boiled eggs, and even sometimes some crumbled bacon, shredded meat, or shredded cheese.

The problem I find with having some of that stuff in my salad is that unless it's cut up pretty small, you don't get some with every bite. And I kind of like to have it with every bite where I can taste it.

I got creative last night. I got out my new food processor (thanks in part to CSN Stores which I'll tell you about later) and started working on my lettuce first. I wasn't sure what would happen, but it came out in small, shredded type pieces. (I put it through the chute and it passed one time through the large blade.) I used one bunch of regular organic green head lettuce and one bunch of organic romaine. Then I passed through a tomato that I'd cut up into about six wedges, some baby carrots, a cucumber I'd peeled and cut into wedges, and one head of broccoli.

Here is what one bowl of it looked like.

The other thing I like is croutons, but I never buy them. They get stale quickly and they are expensive. But since I'd just been reorganizing my pantry recently I thought about my bread crumbs. They are basically like croutons. I had a couple of different flavors, but I chose Parmesan. I sprinkled it on the top with some ranch dressing and stirred it all up (although I hadn't yet in this picture).

I loved it and a couple of the kids tried it with different dressing choices and liked it too. Hubby was already in bed when I put it all together last night, so I packed some up for his lunch today. He called after he'd eaten it and asked to have it every day. He likes salad, and he really liked the bread crumbs (although he couldn't quite figure out what they were). He also commented that because the lettuce was cut up like it was that a lot more fit in his container.

It was a hit all the way around. I can't wait too try it with a bunch of spinach leaves in it and some different lettuce blends. It would be easy to hide from picky kids that see the leaf and know what it is! I think it will also be great this summer with leftover grilled meats sliced up on top.

This whole post made me start thinking about the Seinfeld episode about "The Big Salad." I had to go find it and watch it tonight!