My week of salad creations

I love creating new salads with whatever I can find in my fridge. I am a big fan of cold and warm salad bowls and 'kitchen sink' type of salads. I really enjoy thinking about different ingredients that would go well together and compliment each other, add different textures and create unique flavors. I go well beyond traditional salad veggies and greens and like to include other ingredients such as roasted root vegetables, slightly boiled snap or sugar peas, beans, marinated artichokes or heart of palm, corn, seeds, nuts, and grains. You can find these ingredients in my kitchen almost anytime. Last week I came up with 3 new salads that turned out to be really delicious.

Creation #1: Papaya, avocado, jicama salad

I had a big container of cut up ripe papaya that I really needed to use, as well as 1.5 avocados that wouldn't survive for too long. So I combined them in this really nice refreshing summer salad:

Ingredients:
- 2 cups of cubed papaya
- 1.5 avocado
- About 14 sticks of Trader Joe's cut up jicama
- A small bunch of cilantro
- 10-15 mint leaves
- 1/2 red onion, chopped and marinated in white vinegar fro about 10 minutes

Dressing:
- Juice of 1 lemon
- Juice of 1 lime
- Salt and pepper
- 1 tsp raw honey
- Olive oil, but I skipped it as there was already a lot of avocado in the salad that adds enough creaminess and healthy fats.

Mix all ingredients together and enjoy! This serves 3 as a main course salad or 6 as an appetizer size. There is such a wonderful variety of flavors and textures (crunchy, creamy, smooth) in this salad, which makes it very satisfying. And fresh mint leaves make it so refreshing!

Creation #2: Butternut squash and garbanzo beans salad with tahini dressing

Another thing I found in my fridge last week and needed to use was a box of Trader Joe's butternut squash zig zags. If you've never seen them, those are pieces of a butternut squash cut up in a zig zag pasta shape, sort of rotini. So here is what I created with it:

Ingredients:
- 3 cups squash zig zags, roasted for 20 min at 400F
- 2/3 of a can of garbanzo beans, drained
- 2 cups snap peas, cooked for just 2 minutes in boiling water
- 2 cups of arugula
Dressing:
- juice of 1 lemon, salt, pepper, 2 tbsp tahini sauce, 2 tbsp water
- Olive oil is optional (I skipped it)

The dressing turned out really creamy and reach and made this salad very unique. Tahini adds that subtle nuttiness, sweetness and even a bit of bitterness that I love. My family really enjoyed it as a main course dinner salad served with some chicken prepared in the pressure cooker. The ingredients listed here make 3 servings (as a main course salad.)

Creation #3: Mixed greens salad with smoked trout and eggs

Last week I finally made it to Trader Joe's and bough a bunch of stuff that I can't find in my neighborhood stores. One of them was smoked trout. Yum! And then one day I was working from home and treated myself with this deliciousness:

Ingredients:
- 1 cup of mixed greens
- 1 cup of sugar peas, cooked in boiling water for just 2 minutes
- 1 small kumato tomato
- 2 fried runny eggs
- 1 piece of smoked trout

Dressing: juice of 1/2 lime, salt and pepper

Mix together greens, tomato and peas with dressing and arrange on a plate with trout and 2 eggs. That's truly food heaven!

I constantly experiment with my salad ingredients and will keep you posted on my new discoveries. Stay tuned!