Hello, friends, and happy Wednesday! While it’s always nice to get to hump-day, today feels like a milestone. As of today, I’ve made it through four and a half weeks of my course at Fort Lee! By this time next week, my husband will be up here from Florida, probably at the port trying to get our car shipped, and we’ll be getting ready to pack up and move westward, bound for Hawaii via Colorado, California, Washington, and Alaska. No, we’re not exactly taking the direct route
Thanks to all this travel, I’ve been especially remiss in posting my weekly recipes. I’ve got a lot of tasty new ones in store for you over the next few weeks, and I’m gratified to say that these ones are going to be much healthier than usual! I’ve been really hitting my fitness hard since I’ve been here in Virginia, shaving time off my miles and inches off my waistline, but a huge portion of that change – and fitness in general – is food. Sure, you can work on great shape in the gym, but you really achieve it in the kitchen.
One of my favorite healthy summer staples is a good, crisp salad. I’ve been practically living on salads since I’ve been in army lodging – not just for the diet, but because they’re simple, quick, and easy to make. After ten hours of class and a hard workout, the last thing I want to do is slave in my miniature kitchenette. Well, okay, slaving in the kitchenette isn’t an option, but you get the idea. I’ve come up with a number of different creations, but the three I’m going to share with you today are my favorites.
The first one comes from a recipe Amanda posted on her blog, Marshalls Abroad {seriously, check out this girl’s gorgeous pictures and recipes if you haven’t already!}. I’ve been wanting to make this one for a long time, so when I discovered fresh portobello mushrooms at the little farmers’ market outside our commissary, I knew I was set! Even though I didn’t have all the same ingredients and do all the same prep as Amanda did, it was delicious!
Marinated Steak and Portobello Mushroom Summer Salad
What you’ll need:
- 1 portobello mushroom
- 4-5 oz sliced grilled steak {I marinate mine in garlic salt, pepper, and a half-cup of light soy sauce first}
- Enough mixed greens to cover the plate
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese
- 1/4 cup pecan pieces
- drizzle of Brianna’s blush wine vinaigrette {or another sweet blush vinaigrette}
How to make it:
Easy as…well, salad! You can mix it all together in a bowl, but I plate it with the greens first, then the mushroom and steak, and I sprinkle the pecans and cheese over the top, drizzled with the blush vinaigrette. Try it out – and do try Amanda’s lovely version as well! I will as soon as I get my hands on some balsamic and a way to toast my own croutons!
This next one is my take on a very not light favorite – the Cobb salad. The traditional Cobb is a pile of chicken, egg, tomato, avocado, and bacon that may or may not have a little bit of shredded lettuce underneath it. Those flavors are delicious, but they don’t have to be overdone. My version of the Cobb takes those same or similar flavors and combines them in a nice healthy happy mix of fresh greens!
Light Cobb Summer Salad
What you’ll need:
- 1/2 avocado {or 1/4 Florida avocado – these things are huge!}
- 1/4 cup shredded deli sliced ham
- 1/4 cup shredded deli sliced turkey
- 1 hard-boiled egg, finely diced
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
- Enough mixed greens to cover the plate
- 1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese
- drizzle of Brianna’s blush wine vinaigrette {or Italian vinaigrette}
How to make it:
The idea here is not to have a whole plate full of salad toppings and no salad – the greens should be the bulk of the salad! Dress the greens up with the rest. I like to spread mine out in lines as shown, but they end up all mixed up together anyway. You can substitute another vinaigrette for this if you want – I just have limited storage space, so I just have the one bottle of dressing right now. Luckily, it’s pretty darn tasty!
This last one is my own creation, based actually on a chicken-apple-brie sandwich I used to get at a super little sandwich shop in Charlottesville whose name I can’t remember, but when it comes to me, I’ll share it! Sound weird? Try it – it’s delicious! I’ve made a wrap version of it that I’ll be sharing with you later as well! It’s really just a variant of the first, as you can probably tell, but that’s more a function of me making use of limited ingredients than them really being the same salad. Be creative with it and have fun – if you want to make changes, do!
Chicken Apple Pecan Summer Salad
What you’ll need:
- 1 Granny Smith apple, sliced and cored
- 1/2 cup shredded deli sliced chicken breast
- Enough mixed greens to cover the plate
- 1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese
- 1/4 cup pecan pieces
- drizzle of Brianna’s blush wine vinaigrette {or another sweet blush vinaigrette}
How to make it:
Again, I plated this one with the greens on the bottom and the ingredients lined up on top of them, drizzled with blush wine vinaigrette. You can also toss in a bowl. It’s salad, though. There’s not a whole lot of room to go wrong. About all you can do is use too much vinaigrette, so flavor gently!
There you have it – three easy and tasty summer salads. There’s relatively little cooking involved with any of these, so you can whip them up in a hurry. I made them all in this teeny-tiny little kitchenette. Yes, folks…this is where I’ve been doing my cooking for the past four weeks.
There’s not much there, but if this stay is teaching me anything, it’s how to live well simply. Everything I made, I made with ingredients stashed away in my tiny little fridge, and everything I cooked, I cooked on that little flat surface stove in my single skillet I brought. Granted, I miss my oven and my toaster oven and some of my other appliances, but I’m definitely taking note of what I miss – when it comes time to unpack all of our stuff, if I find something that I forgot about or hadn’t missed, it’s probably getting sold or donated.
Anyway, sorry for the long post, but it’s been a while since I got to share my love of good food with you. Hope you’re all having a great week!
