Saladosity, Part 13: Bleu Cheese and Pecans

[This is the thirteenth post in a long series.  You may wish to start at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

I know it’s been a long journey, but we’ve finally arrived at one of my favorite—and one of the simplest—salads to make with our base veggies and collected condiments and accoutrements.  Just bear with me for a couple more sections, while I explain my:

Salad-Making Lingo

To keep the “recipes” for my salads simple, I’m going to present them all the same way:

• “base veggies” – This just means, take those base veggies you chopped last time and throw them in a bowl.  If you separated any out so they could keep longer, such as cucumbers or romaine, toss them back in at this point.  Quantity of veggies is entirely up to you: how big a salad do you want to make?  For me, the vast majority of the time, this is not a “side” salad; this is pretty much all I’m going to be eating for the given meal.  So just pick whatever size bowl you want, and fill it perhaps ¾ of the way up with the veggies.  You just need a little head-room for a few extras, the dressing, and the tossing.
• extras – In my version of salad, what veggies you use is irrelevant.  It’s the extras (and the dressing, of course) that makes the salad unique.  I generally just list these.  How much should you add?  However much you like.  Do you want a salad with cheese, or a cheesy salad? a salad with crunchy bits, or a crunchy salad?  It’s all up to you.  Typically I put equal parts of my extras; if there’s an exception to that, I’ll call it out in the “recipe.”
• dressing – If the dressing is one that you need to make, we’ll do a separate recipe for that.  Here, I’ll just tell you whether you want light, medium, or heavy dressing.  What do those terms mean?  Well, I’m intentionally leaving it up to you, but here’s a useful guideline:
• “light” dressing – Less that you would normally put on your salad.
• “medium” dressing – About what you would normally put on a salad.
• “heavy” dressing – A bit more than you would normally put on the salad.

I generally put “recipe” in quotes here, because you’re just throwing some stuff in a bowl and mixing it up; calling that a “recipe” is generous at best.  And, oh yeah: maybe a quick word about:

Mixing the Salad

Mixing a salad is often the only challenging part of making the damn thing.  The problem is, once you get the right size bowl, and you fill it up, it becomes practically impossible to actually stir it all up without making a huge mess.  And, at least in my view, nothing is worse than a salad where all the parts are separated.  I’m a firm believer in getting a little bit of each flavor (and texture) in every bite.  So, what’s the solution?

Well, the naive answer is always: just get a bigger bowl.  Duh.  And this seems like an obvious solution.  But I don’t particularly like it.  Because either you’re going to eat out of the bigger bowl, or you’re not.  If you’re going to eat out of the bigger bowl, there are two problems.  The smaller one is that eating out of a giant bowl is awkward.  The bigger one, though, is science demonstrates fairly conclusively that, if you use bigger plates and bowls and whatnot, then you’ll give yourself bigger portions.  And bigger portions—even bigger portions of healthy stuff like salad—is just not good for you.  So I don’t like that option.  On the other hand, what you could do is just portion the salad in the bowl you plan to eat out of, then dump that in the bigger bowl, mix it all up, then dump it back in the smaller bowl.  Which will certainly work, and that may end up becoming your go-to option—if that works for you, go for it.

But I still don’t like it, because it creates more dishes for me to wash, plus they’re big dishes.  Bigger dishes are always a pain in the butt because they’re taking up more room in the dishwasher.  It’s a trivial thing, but it irks me.  What I really want is for someone to invent a bowl that comes with a retractible, dome-shaped lid ... a bit like that lid you get on your Slurpee cup, only it would just slide back and forth instead of you having to attach and detach it.  Until someone invents that brilliant piece of dinnerware, I just make my own.

Take a bowl that’s even smaller than your bowl you want to be eating out of, and flip it upside down and put it on top of the eating bowl.  If the two bowls have roughly the same diameter, it should fit fairly neatly.  And, surprisingly, most bowls (outside serving bowls) do have roughly the same diameter: the difference in sizes is usually more about the depth than the width.  Now just take your two-bowl concoction and just shake it: back and forth, up and down, twist it a little ... whatever turns you on.  Remove the “lid” and you have a perfectly tossed salad.  You still have an extra dish to wash, sure, but at least it’s a little one.  Not too shabby, eh?

Finally, here’s our first salad.

Bleu Cheese Pecan Salad

One day at my Trader Joe’s I was looking for dip.  Typically we don’t eat a lot of chips and dip in our house—chips are one of those things that it’s super easy to overeat, so I try to save it for a special occasion.  But of course New Year’s Eve is a special occasion, and that’s when we eat the vast majority of our chips and dip for the year.  So at the end of December one year, several years back, I was looking for something interesting to dip some chips in.  Hey: I like French onion dip as much as the next guy, and I absolutely adore a 7-layer-style dip for tortilla chips, but sometimes you just want something different, ya know?  Anyways, I stumbled across this bleu-cheese-pecan dip, and I though, hunh ... that sounds like it might be good.  And it was, in fact, amazing: I think TJ’s still carries it, so you should definitely try it out sometime.

But, more importantly, I was inspired by how well the two flavors melded, when I had never really thought of them as a natural pairing before.  Thus, this salad was created.  If for some reason you don’t like pecans, you could subsitute other nuts—I’ve tried this varation with almonds, cashews, and pistachios, in fact, and various combinations of all of them—but I still think pecans are the absolute best.

• base veggies
• bleu cheese crumbles
• pecans
• feta cheese dressing (medium)

Now, you may remember that we specifically bought pre-crumbled bleu cheese, thus making adding bleu cheese to a salad trivial: no choppping, no mess, just dump some in the bowl.  We also talked about buying a decent pre-made feta cheese dressing which was close to Whole30-compliant—obviously it’s got dairy in it, so it’s not really Whole30-safe, but it has no added sugars of any kind, no soybean oil, etc.  I think it’s a pretty healthy dressing, and, remember, one of only two that I buy pre-made.  So that’s super-simple too.

And, the thing about dumping some of that creamy, feta cheese dressing on top of the bleu cheese crumbles is, it makes a better bleu cheese dressing than anything you could ever buy, and I’m guessing better than many you could make yourself.  Certainly it was way easier than making bleu cheese dressing from scratch.  And, while we will be making some dressings from scratch—never fear!—every once in a while it’s nice to have an alternative that costs you zero extra effort.

And this salad is really good.  This is not my go-to for a really big dinner salad (we’ll come to that one in the fullness of time), but for a lighter dinner (or maybe a big lunch), this is an excellent choice.  And it requires the absolute least effort of any of the salads I’m going to show you, so I eat it quite often.  Give it a shot.  Despite the simplicity, I think you’ll be very pleased.  Very pleased indeed.

Next time, we’ll ratchet up the complexity just a tiny notch, and I’ll show you my favorite “snack” salad.

Saladosity, Part 12: Always Be Prepared

[This is the twelfth post in a long series.  You may wish to start at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

To be prepared is half the victory.

    — Miguel de Cervantes

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

    — Abraham Lincoln

Today we’re going to talk about veggie prep.  Part of my secret to saladosity (if there even is one) is this: always have a bunch of chopped veggies in the fridge.  I’m telling you from experience: if I keep chopped veggies in the fridge, I will eat salads just about every day, and never get bored doing it.  If I don’t keep chopped veggies, I will wish I could eat salad for a little while and then give up and eat something terribly unhealthy.  Look, it may be a bit of a cliché to point out in this day and age, but today’s modern life puts a shitload of demands on your time.  Whether it’s realistic or not—hell, whether it’s even real or not—we all at least feel like we never have time to do things.  If you have to chop veggies every time you want to eat a salad, you will hardly ever eat salad, simply because you don’t want to take the time.  If you set aside an hour or two once a week, you can chop enough veggies for the entire week and eat healthy every day.  If you don’t believe me, just try the experiment.  This coming weekend, chop a big bowl of veggies as I suggest below then record how often you eat salad the next week.  The following weekend, don’t.  Then see how often you eat salad.  Compare numbers, then return here.

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

So we’re going to chop a big batch of veggies and we’re going to stick it in the fridge and keep it for a week.  With proper preparation, you can manage to keep almost anything for a week after it’s been chopped (and we’ll cover the major exception below).  You may be able to push it for a few days beyond that, but I wouldn’t count on it.  So the big trick is to work out how much salad you can eat in a week.  Once you get that down, the rest is pretty trivial.

So here’s my pro tips:

Prepping for the Prep

From our last post, you’ll need your chef’s knife (or Santoku knife, if you prefer that style), your vegetable peeler, your cutting board, and your salad spinner.  Also, although I didn’t specifically cover it in my equipment post, take a tip from Rachel Ray¹ and get a large bowl to hold your ends and seeds and peelings and all that.  It’s much easier to dump it all at the end.

Most of your veggies need a quick wash.  Unless you’re doing something crazy like leeks, you probably won’t need to soak.  But certain things—especially celery—need to be disassembled during the washing process to make sure you’re getting all the dirt from between the stalks or leaves.  Rub your thumb along any particularly dirty spots; that’s normally sufficient.

Scallions and onions (and other allium relatives) need special attention.  For onions, remove the outermost layer—not just the papery part!  The outer layer is usually not that great, and onions are cheap.  Scallions are similar but I dont always remove the outermost layer: just check that layer, and especially the long leafy part of it, to see if it’s wilted or bedraggled or starting to get a bit slimy.  If so, remove it.  In both cases, make sure you get the transparent membrane between the outer layer and the next layer.  Rub it hard and it should come right off.  If you know how to get the “skin” off a hard-boiled egg, this is the same principle.

Bagged Greens

You don’t have to buy greens in bags, of course.  Feel free to buy whole heads of lettuce or what-have-you and chop it or shred it by hand.  But that’s a pain.  The nice thing about buying greens in bags is that most of the work is done for you: the greens are washed, separated and/or chopped, and all the really bad leaves have already been tossed.  Plus you can typically get a lot more options when it comes to bagged, and often even blends of different greens, which can save you the hassle of buying a bunch of different ones and combining them yourself.

Which is not to say that using bagged greens is no work, of course.  You still need to pick out the really good leaves from the not-quite-as-good leaves.  You’re not looking for leaves that are so bad you wouldn’t eat them—you’re not going to find many (if any) of those.²  You’re looking for leaves that will be bad in a few days.  You know the expression “one bad apple spoils the bunch”?  Same principle, only with lettuce leaves it’s much more likely and will happen much more quickly.  Be ruthless: discolored spots? wilted consistency? brown around the edges? looked at you funny when you picked it up?  Toss ’em all.

There’s various things you can do with the rejects.  If you compost, that’s a fantastic destination for the not bad leaves.  If you’re particularly budget conscious, you can always just make a salad out of them right on the spot: remember, they’re not bad yet.  Personally, I feed them to our guinea pig.  Certain lizards, fish, or turtles/tortoises are other good choices.  Hey, your fuzzy and scaly children deserve good organic food too, right?

Do not underestimate this step.  You’ll end up with a nicer (crunchier and tastier) salad that will last significantly longer.  On the other hand, don’t stress over it either.  When you see a piece that has a bit of a spot on one side, either let it pass or just rip it in half and let the pieces go to the appropriate receptacle.  When you get to the bottom and it’s all little dinky bits, just toss those in with the guinea pig fodder: lettuce is cheap and your time is worth more than a few stray leaves.  I do this with my salad spinner on one side and my garbage bowl on the other, sorting two-handed.  With a little practice, you can do this surprisingly quickly.  But I won’t lie to you: the first couple of times, it’ll seem like a giant pain in the ass.  Perservere.  Trust me, your patience will be rewarded.³

Chopping Veggies

Now, in general, you’re better off searching YouTube, because a video can teach you chopping hints with a shorter time investment and a clearer visualization than any large quantity of words I could spew out.  But I’ll hand out a few tips:

Onions.  I like to cut the non-stem end off, then cut them in half.  This is the only time I cut the stem end, which minimizes the amount of crying.⁴  Then each half gets a radial cut, then cross cut to make a lovely dice.  One half I chop fine, which means I try to line my radial cuts with every “stripe” on the onion, and the other half I do a rougher chop, which basically just means I go with every other stripe.

Peppers.  Cut the cap off, then reach in and just yank out the guts by hand.  Tap the sides to get the remaining seeds.  Chop it in half, slice the little puckered end off each side, then flatten it as best you can and, holding your knife parallel to the pepper, slice the ribs off.  Do them one at a time at first; eventually you’ll be able to do 2 at once.

Cucumbers.  Peel them first, then chop the ends off.  Cut them the long way, once for thinner cucumbers (like most Persians), or twice for fatter models (like most Americans).  Then just chop along the length.

Celery.  You can buy pre-cut stalks, but I find those go bad more quickly.  So just buy whole hearts and cut them yourself.  At the cut end, just slice an additional sliver off to remove that unsightly part that’s starting to brown.  At the stem end, cut off the really really white part (which is also pretty tough), and maybe anything that was so dirty or streaked that it wouldn’t come clean.  Slice each rib in half the long way, then chop down the line.

Scallions.  Chop off the very tip of the bulb, where it’s “hairy.”  Now just bunch them all together and chop down the length until you get into the fully green parts.  Now begin to stop every 4 or 5 chops and look at the leaves; any that are looking sad or too woody or too flat or anything unappetizing, pull them out and toss them in the garbage bowl.  Then chop 4 or 5 more times and keep repeating that process until you don’t have any leaves left.

Other Stuff.  You’re own your own for other veggies, because that’s all the veggies I personally chop.  Fruits I always chop for the particular salad at the time I make it.

Refigerator Storage

Believe it or not, the best way to store the majority of your veggies is right in the salad spinner.  I dump them directly in there from the cutting board tray.  Spin it a few times, then stick in the back of the fridge with the lid on.  Every time you take it to make salad with, leave the lid off it for a while to let some of that moisture evaporate, then spin it a few more times and back in the fridge.  The only other consideration I’m going to give you is this: if it so happens that you go for a day or two without making a salad (and I think you’re going to be surprised how rarely that happens), take the salad spinner out anyway and let it breathe and spin it.  The trick with keeping veggies fresh in the fridge is that you have them keep them moist, or else they dry out and get gross, but you can’t let them get too moist, or else they get slimy and then they’re gross.  So keeping that moisture at the perfect level is key.

However, there are exceptions to keeping all your veggies together.  Let’s talk about the most important ones.

Onions.  I don’t actually use yellow onions in any of my main salads, but I use them all the time in cooking, and I like having them around.  And, if today is veggie chopping day anyway, why not do ’em all?  So I store the onions in separate containers.  I also like to store a few of the pepper and celery bits separately, and then I can have trinity ready at all times.⁵

Cucumbers.  People give iceberg lettuce shit for being mostly water, but honestly that will last in the fridge just fine (although certainly butter lettuce is better).  Cucumbers, however, are really all water, so they get mushy fast, and you don’t want them to take the rest of your salad down with them.  I like to cut about half as many cucumbers as I think I’m going to need (which, if you’re doing the big, fat Americans, is probably just one), and then store the pieces in a container lined with a paper towel—that helps keep the moisture level about as perfect as you’re going to get.  You may have to cut up another cucumber in the middle of the week, but it’s better than gross, mushy cucumbers, right?

Romaine.  I like romaine lettuce, but I had to give up on it, because it goes bad if you just look at it funny.  Seriously, romaine will pretty much instantly decompose and take down everything around it, which can be super-tragic.  I swore off the stuff long ago.  But, if you insist on using romaine anyway, just don’t cut it until immediately before you’re going to eat it.  I know that’s a bigger pain—and that’s exactly why I don’t eat it any more—but there just isn’t any other decent option.


Believe it or not, after 12 installments, we’re finally done getting ready.  Next time, I’m going to show you the simplest of our primary six salads.

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1 And many other chefs who know what they’re talking about, I’m sure, but I learned it from Rachel.

2 And, if you do, please consider using a different grocery store next time.

3 As Alton Brown is wont to say.

4 It is of course possible not to cut the stem at all, but I find that method more unweildy, and plus I like cutting the two halves differently, as we’ll see.

5 Trinity, by the way, is not only excellent for all forms of Cajun cuisine, but is amazing for omelettes or scrambles, Italian dishes like Italian sausage in marinara sauce, or even on pizzas.  Yes, I put celery on my pizza.  Deal with it.

Saladosity, Part 11: The Right Equipment

[This is the eleventh post in a long series.  You may wish to start at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

Finally we’ve bought all our food and we can start looking at equipment.  If you’re a fan of Good Eats, Alton would say we’re done with the software and now we can move on to the hardware.¹  Now, for this post in particular, I’m going to be throwing a whole bunch of links at you.  That’s mainly so you can see what I’m talking about.  I’m not saying you have to buy these exact brands.  In fact, I’m not even particularly recommending these brands.  I literally just found the most appopriate picture, is all.

Now, you probably think I’m going to tell you the most important piece of equipment you need is a good knife.  Nope.  I personally think the most important thing you need to make a good salad is a good cutting board.  You want something big and solid and made of wood—you can never cut raw meat on it, of course, but we won’t need any raw meat for any of our salads.  I like the style that has a removable tray in it, but there are lots of options.  Main thing is, you want it to be big enough to work comfortably without running out of space, but small enough to fit in your sink sideways for easy rinsing.  (Perfectly fine if you need to flip it around to get the other side because it sticks up out of the sink so much.)  The tray makes it nice because you just sweep the chopped veggies into it and it’s easy to dump things into your bowl or other container.

Of course, a good knife is absolutely the second most important thing.  You have a couple of options here.  Personally, I thnk the all-around best knife is the chef’s knife.  Nice, solid, easy-to-grip handle, wide, heavy blade, perfect for chopping.  I like ones made of all metal, but, again, there are lots of styles to choose from.  Your other good option is a Santoku knife.  Again, I like the all metal style, but whatever floats your boat.  The Santoku lacks the sharp point on the end, which is probably a good thing (it’s one less thing to stab yourself with), and it has cullens (those scalloped depressions on the sides) which reduce cutting friction.  So it has a few advantages.  But it’s not as heavy, and the shape is a little less ideal, at least in my hand.  But I still like the Santoku, especially for cutting onions (for some reason).  So I commonly switch back and forth between the two.

The next thing you’ll need is a good vegetable peeler.  Now, there are like a zillion different kinds of peelers out there.  On the advice of Alton Brown,² I prefer a “Y peeler” style.³  The Mother, on the other hand, absolutely hates that style,⁴ and likes the old fashioned metal pieces of garbage that leave grooves in your palm and are prone to twisting unexpectedly and slicing the tips of your fingers off.  Which is nice if you’re trying to elude the police and don’t want to leave fingerprints any more, I suppose, but otherwise seems less than ideal.  The main thing I use it for is peeling cucumbers, which are my all-time favorite salad vegetable, but perhaps you like other veggies that need peeling.  And also there’s apples, although many people like to leave the peels on those.  Personally I’m not a big peel fan, regardless of the type of produce.  The main thing here is that you want something that feels comfortable in your hand and that will more often peel veggies than you.

Now that you can chop all your veggies, you’ll need a way to make your dressings.  In other words, you need a good food processor.  Now, there like a zillion different options for that, and you can spend as much or as little as you like getting one.  But I’ll tell you the one I particularly like: the Ninja kitchen system.  It’s a bit pricey, but you can often get a good deal on one at Costco, and, in addition to making excellent dressings, you can make smoothies too.  Which is a mega-bonus, as far as I’m concerned.  But as long as you can both chop and puree, that’s all you really need.

And now it’s time to move from the obviously-necessary to the so-you-think-you-can-live-without-it category.  Perfect example: an apple corer-slicer.  Perhaps you’ve not actually seen one of these; it’s a small circle of metal inside a larger circle of metal with 6 or 8 “spokes” connecting the two.  Sometimes the outside circle is actually plastic, as in this model, which also has nice rubber grips.  Basically, you put the small circle over the core of the apple and just push down, and: voilà.  Perfect apple slices, just about every time.  Now, you may think you don’t need such a thing—after all, can’t you just use a paring knife?  Well, sure ... you could.  But the whole point of this series is making eating healthy easy.  With one of these babies, you can get 6 or 8 perfect slices of apple in about 10 seconds, and at least half of that is spent just lining up the circles.  Practically the only time you have to spend preparing an apple is peeling it, and, if you’re okay with eating apple peel,⁵ then you’re spending no time at all.  Easy prep means you’re more likely to eat the fruit.

Similarly, many people think you don’t really need an egg slicer.  And there are some downsides to having one, such as being bitchy to clean, and, if the “strings” get warped, it gets harder to open back up.  But they’re cheap, and way easier (and faster) than trying to slice a hard-boiled egg with a knife.  And two bonus points:  First, your slices of eggs are perfectly consistent, every time, which you can never manage with a knife, because you’re constantly trying to slice something which is both round and slippery.  Secondly, after you turn the egg into slices, you can then turn it 90 degrees and slice it crosswise, thus turning your slices into chunks, so you have options.  Personally, I own the OXO model, but I’m sure many others are just as lovely.

Another thing you may think you can live without (but you would be wrong) is a good stick blender—at least I’ve always called it a “stick blender,” but apparently the proper name is “immersion blender.”  This is another item which comes in many different flavors: you can even get one with a whisk attachment.  But you don’t need anything fancy.  Now, a stick blender is excellent for making soup, and that alone would make it worth the 20 bucks (or even less).  But where it really shines is making mayonnaise.  See, mayonnaise is one of those things that is very difficult to find made out of anything other than crappy ingredients like soybean oil.  And, you can make it yourself, but it takes forever and it’s really easy to screw up.  Unless you have a stick blender.  If you have a stick blender, it takes about a minute of prep time, and maybe 30 seconds worth of actual work.  Trust me: you need one of these.

Now, I also mentioned earlier that you were going to need a good pepper grinder.  Can you live without one of these?  No, you cannot.  Do not try to substitute crappy pepper dust for freshly-cracked peppercorns.  The tastes are only vaguely related, like trying to substitute cheap lemon flavoring for actual lemon juice.  Now, I personally prefer a shorter model with good rubber grips,⁶ because I think those tall skinny models are more awkward than stylish: give me functional any day.  But the main thing is to have an adjustable grind and to be easy to refill.  I think having a transparent barrel, so you can quickly see when you’re about to run out, is pretty handy too, but some people favor form over function.  Whatever works for you.

Finally, we move into the category of you-don’t-absolutely-have-to-have-it-but-you’ll-be-happier-if-you-do.  For instance, take the electric lemon juicer.  Could you juice lemons without one?  Of course you can.  But it’s a huge pain in the ass.  And remember: we’re all about making it quick and easy.  The kind of juicer I have is a basic Black & Decker model with an adjustable pulp filter, two sizes of reamers, and an auto-reverse function.  Yep, believe it or not, that’s a pretty simple one—you can get all kinds of complex above and beyond that.  But that’s all you really need.

Once you make your dressings, you can just keep them in bowls, or tupperware-style containers.  But it’s much nicer if you have a big funnel and some glass bottles.  As far as bottles go, you certainly could buy them from Amazon, but why bother?  Just save some of the bottles from other salad dressings that you buy: peel the lables off, throw ’em in the dishwasher, and Bob’s yer uncle.  As far as funnels go, I (perhaps predictably) favor the OXO, but, really, one funnel is as good as another, for the most part.

The very last thing you could live without but won’t want to is a decent salad spinner.  Our plan is to make a big batch of veggies, then keep them around for at least a week.  That way, any time you want salad, it’s right there at your fingertips, and you’re only chopping up massive quantities of produce once a week or so.  But in order for this plan to work, you’re going to need to be able to store that big batch in such a way that it will last a week without getting yucky.  And, for that, a salad spinner is absolutely the best tool.  You can toss your veggies in it, you can use the magic of centrifugal force to whisk off excess moisture, and then throw the whole spinner in the fridge, where it will keep your salad moist enough not to dry out and get disgusting but not so moist it starts to decompose and become disgusting.  A salad spinner is the most super-awesome innovation in salad-making technology in the past century, I would say.  Do not fail to take advantage of it.


That’s all the equipment we’ll need, unless of course I think of more along the way.  But it’s probably sufficient.  Next time, let’s put all this equipment to use and start chopping up some of those veggies we bought.

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1 Although, to be fair, AB generally does the hardware first.  But I wanted to get the software out of the way because it’s way more complicated.

2 Did I mention I’m a Good Eats fan?

3 That is actually the exact peeler I own, as Amazon helpfully reminded when I brought that page up.

4 Probably because Alton Brown likes it.  She has an unreasonable distaste for that man.

5 Blech.

6 Again, this is actual model I own.  I must have a thing for OXO, which somehow I never realized before I started writing this post.

Whole30(ish)

This month, I’ve decided to do another Whole30.  Now, I’ve talked about my take on Whole30 before, and I don’t really want this post to be a regurgitation of that one (although some repetition will be inevitable).  But I think it’s worth delving into some more detail about what I’m talking about when I say I’m “doing” a Whole30.

To briefly recap, the concept behind Whole30 is that you spend 30 days eating a very narrow variety of things—partially to reset your taste buds and digestive tract, and partially to remind you of what real food tastes like—and then you add things back in, slowly, maybe never getting around to adding back in the really bad things at all, like donuts or McDonald’s food.  This works well, but, as time goes on, you will unavoidably start slipping more and more, so it’s a good idea every now and again—perhaps no more than every year or two, even—to start over.  For me, the last six months or so have included three food-centric holidays,¹ a pretty stressful family medical procedure, and an atypically intense project for work.  So I’ve not so much fallen off the wagon as been run over by it.  My weight has crept back up, and my digestive system was gradually starting to revolt.  So another reset seemed like a good idea.  Plus, The Mother wanted to do it as well, and, as I’ve mentioned, it’s always easier to coordinate my diet with hers.

But I’m not that interested in being as strict this time around as I’ve been in the past.  I think that’s it’s okay to make small exceptions—or even big exceptions—as long as you’re clear with yourself exactly what the limits are up front.  Where you get into trouble is when you try to leave it “flexible” ... which is code for “I’ll just cheat whenever I feel like it.”  The problem with cheating—even tiny, insignificant cheating—is that it feeds itself.  You cheat a little here, and the world doesn’t end, so you cheat a little there, and, next thing you know, you’re less cheating and more abandoning.  If you set up the modified rules beforehand, and you stick to them, then you’re not cheating at all: you’re just playing a slightly modified game from everyone else.

Before I lay out my guidelines, let me be clear that I don’t recommend something like this for your first Whole30.  The first time around, you should stick to the rules more closely.  Only once you’ve been doing this for a while should you consider deviations such as the ones below.  And of course many will say even then it’s not acceptable.  But I’m a little more open to variations in the core plan.

So let’s look at the broad categories of banned foods for a standard Whole30 and what exceptions I’m personally allowing for this particular reset.  Note also that every exception must have a frequency as well: just because I’m willing to allow something doesn’t mean I think it’s okay to eat it every day.

No grains.  In general, I’m all in favor of this restriction.  I personally find that cutting out grains makes my body much happier.  That may not be true for you—one of the things that makes nutrition such a devilishly tricky thing to advise people on is that everyone is different.  But I definitely do better when avoiding grains of all types, so I’m sticking to that, broadly.  The only exception I’ve made so far is that we cooked one meal which included whole kernel corn, which I thought was okay as long as it wasn’t an everyday thing.  I think it’s worth staying away from the myriad forms that corn is tortured into, in general, and just eating corn straight off the cob does not do my digestion any favors, but a bit of actual corn as part of a larger meal seems okay.  As long as it’s infrequent—I probably wouldn’t want to do this more than one a week, say.

Oh, and I’m still okay with corn starch used to keep my shredded cheese from clumping.  But not for anything else.

No legumes.  So, first of all, it’s fair to note that even rigorous Whole30 allows one exception to this rule: green beans (a.k.a. “string beans”).  This is because, while there’s technically some bean in there somewhere, the vast majority of what you eat when you eat a green bean is the pod around the relatively tiny beans.  The actual legumes you manage to consume are minimal.  But the truth for me personally is that, outside of peanuts, there aren’t really too many legumes I’m even tempted by.  I don’t actually care for string beans, really, and I’ve always been decidedly “meh” on peas.  I like kidney beans, but I don’t miss them in chili, and what’s the point of red beans and rice if you can’t have rice?  I used to enjoy pork-and-beans / baked beans, but that involves sugar.  And I dig refried beans, but you can’t really eat Mexican without corn, so there’s another dead end.  Soy sauce is a bit of a blow, but it turns out that coconut aminos are a reasonable substitute.  And there are other nut butters besides peanut butter, and you can make hummus out of cashews instead of chickpeas, if you’re particularly dedicated to it.  So far I don’t think I’ve consumed any legumes or legume products at all, and I don’t plan to.

No added sweeteners.  If you’re doing a strict Whole30, all your sugar has to come from fruit: whole fruit, dried fruit, or fruit juice.  99% of the time this is plenty for me.  However, I do allow just a few exceptions here:

• Honey is very natural and I don’t have anything against it.  Still, I hardly ever use any.  One exception is that, once a week, I make a big batch of smoothies, mainly for my kids.  But you can bet I’m having a big ol’ cup myself as well.  And sometimes (not every time), my taste testers inform me that whatever particular combination of fruits I’m using that week is too tart.  And the answer to that is honey.  And I’m not going to make them drink smoothies that they think are too sour, and I’m not going to skip a delicious smoothie just beacuse there were a couple of squirts of honey in 8 cups worth of the finished product.  So, while I try to use sweeter fruits to avoid needing honey at all (bananas and pineapple are the best options there, if you’re curious), if I have to, I have to, and I don’t beat myself up about it.  Also, I’ve been experimenting with making my own Whole30-safe granola, which I’m supposed to make with date syrup.  But, really: is honey any worse than date syrup?  I don’t think so.
• I make my own Thousand Island dressing, which has no explicit sugar and isn’t particularly sweet.  But it does have ketchup, and ketcup contains sugar.  You can’t have ketchup without sugar ... trust me, I’ve tried.  Again, this is more of a once-per-week type of thing rather than an everyday one, but, as long as I stick to that frequency, I think it’s okay.
• Did you know that even low-carb diets such as LCHF and Atkins will let you eat chocolate, as long as it has no less than 85% cocoa solids?  It’s like their only exception to the absolutely-no-carbs rule.  That’s good enough for me, man.  Most days the tiny amount of sugar in my preferred brand of 85% dark chocolate is often the only actual sugar I consume in a day.  And the taste is strong enough that I don’t want to eat too much of it at a time.
• As a super-special exception, I allow myself a small glass of eggnog no more than once a week.  I stocked up on the stuff at Christmas, but it ain’t gonna last forever, and it’ll probably all be useless right about the time I’m done with my 30 days.  And I love me some ‘nog.  So I cut myself some slack here.

Even with all those exceptions, though, it’s still a pretty radical reduction over the amount of sugar and other sweeteners I’ve been consuming lately.

No dairy.  Okay, so this one is right out the window.  The only benefit I ever got from this part of Whole30 was my introduction to ghee (ghee is the only official exception to the “no dairy” rule), which I now use almost exclusively instead of butter.  These days all our milk (for both drinking and cooking, although I rarely just drink it) is lactose-free, because our middle child is even more lactose-intolerant than I am, weirdly.²  But even that’s a small amount of my dairy intake.  Mainly, for me, it’s all about cheese and yogurt.  Cheese is excellent in salads,³ and it’s a decent late night snack instead of the usual chips or cookies or candy.  And yogurt is simply awesome, if you can find any without any added sweeteners.  Toss in some of your own fruit, or some of that homemade granola I was talking about, and it’s amazing (and filling).

No alcohol.  I’m really irked about this one.  Multiple studies suggest that avoiding alcohol entirely may actually increase your chance of heart disease, and I’ve yet to hear any cogent defense of the no-alochol rule from the Whole30 folks.  So I have a very simple rule: I will allow alcohol as long as whatever it was originally made of, before it was fermented, would be allowed under the plan.  So the number one thing that allows is wine; I’m not much of a wine drinker, personally,⁴ but it’s nice to be able to allow good wine sauces or good dijon mustard.  But if you can track down good vodka, that’s made from potatoes (cheap vodka is made from grain, so I stay away from that crap).  And good vodka is a pleasure to drink, so that’s nice too.  Gin works as well, although it’s defnitely a distant second in the liquor department as far as I’m concerned.  And I think tequila might be okay by my rule, but I don’t really like tequila, so I’ve never bothered to do enough research to verify that.

No chips or fries.  I’m pretty down with this rule.  The only real exception I allow is roasted plantain chips, which I think are significantly different from fried chips.  First of all, they’re not particularly good to just eat a handful of, so they’re no replacement for potato chips (or even fried plantain chips).  But they’re perfectly good to double as crackers with some cheese, or to crumble on a salad instead of tortilla chips.  So, since they enable me to avoid two things I really don’t want to make an exception for, I voted them in.

No sulfites or other preservatives.  The official exception to this is balsamic vinegar, and I extend that to wine, reasoning that, if it wasn’t already banned by reason of being alcohol, it should be allowed under the same logic as vinegar.  I also eat a braunschweiger which contains sodium nitrite, but A) that’s more of a curing agent than a preservative, and B) I don’t eat braunschweiger that often.  Other than that, I’m pretty religious in following this one.

So that’s my version of Whole30(ish), and I try to stick to it.  Anything outside these explicit exceptions I consider cheating, and I feel appropriately guilty about it, and vow to do better.  But I’ve only cheated a couple of times so far, and I expect to make it to the end with the total number of cheats enumerable on the fingers of one hand.  And I can live with that much.  Perfection is a nice goal to aim for, but it doesn’t make much sense to beat yourself up if you don’t achieve it, because you never will.  The most important thing is to see a big improvement in your diet, and this represents that for me.  And that’s good enough.

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1 Yes, I include Hallowe’en.  If you’re not binging on crappy candy as part of your Samhain tradition, you’re doing it wrong.

2 I say “weirdly” because lactose intolerance is commonly something that gets worse with age.  But if the Smaller Animal’s condition gets any worse he may not be able to look at a milk carton without having to run to the toilet.

3 I talked about my favorite cheeses for salads in my Saladosity series, specifically when I went shopping for meat and cheese.

4 My alcohol of choice is beer, but that’s just liquid bread.  So that’s out.

Saladosity, Part 10: Dry, but Good

[This is the tenth post in a long series.  You may wish to start at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]


Finally we come to the last bit of shopping that we’ll need for our salads.  Today we’re going to close out our long trip¹ to the grocery store by looking at the dry goods aisle.

Spices and Seasonings

This list is surprisingly short.  I don’t have anything against dried spices per se; I just tend to use them more in cooking than in salad-making.

Salt.  Obviously you need salt.  It’s difficult to make much of anything—or at least anything you’d actually want to eat—without salt.  For the most part, we’re not using any other ingredients that might also include salt, so we get to add it ourselves.  Which is nice, because we not only get to choose what kind of salt we put in our food, but (more importantly) how much we add.

In terms of kind, for my money it’s tough to beat straight up sea salt.  Whether you like it coarse ground or finely ground is just a matter of preference, but I would stay away from the crappy iodized stuff, and contrariwise I wouldn’t bother with the super-fancy stuff, like pink Himalayan salt or what-have-you.  Good old sea salt is natural, tastes good, doesn’t require a large amount to make itself heard, and it’s fairly inexpensive to boot.

When it comes to amounts, I’m a firm believer in the “pinch.”  You can have a “little pinch,” which I would define as still being able to feel the pad of your thumb with your index finger, or you can have a “big pinch,” which to me means it’s nothing but salt between your fingertips.  If you really seriously must measure, you can always work with a big pinch equal to about 1/16 of a teaspoon, and a little pinch perhaps half that, but, really: don’t bother.  Learn to pinch.  It’s a valuable skill that never ceases to be useful.

Pepper.  By which we mean black pepper.  Now, when I was growing up, I hated pepper.  What I came to learn is, I don’t actualy hate pepper ... I just hate that crappy black pepper dust that you buy for your shakers.  My dad absolutely adores that stuff.  Whereas I can’t stand it.

Now, freshly ground peppercorns are a whole different beast.  That, as it turns out, I love.  Buy whole black peppercorns (organic if you like, but I don’t think it makes as much difference for peppercorns) and get yourself a good grinder.  (We’ll talk more about that when we get to equipment.)  And, just like I don’t actually measure salt, I don’t measure pepper either.  For me, pepper is delivered in only one unit: grinds.

Of course, the truth is, how much pepper you get out of “a grind” of your pepper mill depends on several factors, most especially the size of your grinder and how much rotational freedom your wrist has.  But, here’s the thing: how much pepper you want depends on your personal relationship with pepper.  So I don’t get fussed about exact measurements for pepper, because they likely wouldn’t work for you anyway.  Just start with however many grinds I suggest the first time you make it, then adjust for taste thereafter.  I do love pepper, but I don’t put way more pepper than you can stand in anything.  Except eggs.²

Garlic Powder.  The most important thing to note here is that garlic powder is not interchangeable with garlic salt.  Remember: we want to control how much salt we’re adding to things.  Trying to substitute garlic salt when I tell you to use garlic powder is just going to end up making everything too salty.  And too much salt is not particularly good for you—not as bad as too much lots-of-other-things, but not great either—so that would defeat the purpose of eating healthy via salad.

You can buy organic garlic powder if you like, but, as with the peppercorns, I doubt you’ll notice much difference (if any).  Could you substitute fresh garlic instead?  Well, I suppose you could.  Should you?  I personally don’t think so.  There are several spices where fresh is the same as dried, only nicer: oregano, for instance, or cilantro, or parsley, or basil.  Garlic is not one of them.  Garlic powder is just not the same as fresh garlic; they’re two entirely different beasts.  But, hey: you do you.

Optional:  In the you-don’t-need-it-but-you-might-want-it category, it won’t hurt to pick out a nice taco seasoning.  It’s hard as hell to find one without any undesireable ingredients in it: most of them have corn starch, which is silly, and almost all of them have sugar, which is just annoying and unnecessary.  Even the Trader Joe’s store brand³ fails me here—they’ve omitted the corn starch, but left in the sugar.  Et tu, Trader Joe’s?  I bite my thumb at you, sir!

So get whatever you can find.  It’ll be nice to have if you want actual meat when we come to the Mexican salad.

Oils

There is huge debate over which oils are good and which are bad.  Some like canola; some spit on the ground in disgust at the mere mention of it.  Some favor flaxseed; some say it’s vastly overrated and tastes terrible to boot.  Some rave about coconut; others claim it has more detrimental effects than beneficial ones.  I’m not here to settle these debates for you.  I’m just going to give you a few options that I myself use, and then you pick what you like.

Remember: for this application, we’re not going to be cooking anything with these.  That means it’s okay to get delicate, flavorful oils, even those that have a low smokepoint.  (In fact, delicate and flavorful is desireable; low smokepoint is just irrelevant.)  Look for cold-pressed oils wherever possible; most experts agree that extraction methods that involve heat tend to destroy at least some of the valuable nutritional bits.⁴

Avocado Oil.  Avocado oil is my new favorite oil of all time.  It has a great, fruity taste which is ever so vaguely reminiscent of avocados, without being strongly redolent of them, and it turns everything a delightful, delicate shade of green.  It is a bit pricey, and you can overdo it; for both those reasons, I often use half avocado and half something else, or perhaps two-thirds avocado and one-third something else, if I’m feeling saucy.  But you owe it to yourself to try some, at least once.  It’s really worthwhile.

Grapeseed Oil.  This is a weird one.  Grapeseed oil has a piquant taste that can easily overpower things if you’re not careful.  I originally bought it to experiment with it as a mayonnaise base, but that was a big flop.  Then, just to get rid of it, I started using it for my cilantro dressing, and it actually shone there, so I’ve continued using it for that.  In fact, that’s now the only thing I use it for.  If you don’t want to have an extra bottle of oil lying around, you can skip this one and substitute any of the other oils in the cilantro dressing, but I like the grapeseed there.  Just not anywhere else.

Sunflower Oil.  Sunflower oil is a great neutral oil: it doesn’t have a strong taste, and it has a decent smokepoint, so you can actually cook with it as well.  For our purposes, we’re mainly going to be using it to cut the avocado oil, lest that get overpowering.  But it’s a handy, versatile oil that you can use for lots of things, so it’s handy backup.

Fair warning: some people put sunflower in the category of “bad” oils.  My personal opinion is, it’s leagues better than corn or soy, and I personally think, from my limited research, that it beats out canola as well.  But you make your own choices.

Optional: It’s hard to go wrong with a good olive oil.  Personally, I like olive oil for cooking certain things—especially Italian things—but then, if you’re going to cook with it, you don’t need the fancy extra-virgin stuff, which you do want for cold applications.⁵  So I end up buying the cheap olive oil to cook with, so then I don’t want to use it in dressings, and besides I think avocado oil is more interesting anyway.

Things in Jars

Probably the vinegar should have gone here, but I stuck it under condiments.  Ah well.  That leaves only one thing ...

Dill pickles.  Now you may recall that I’m not a huge fan of vinegar, which means I don’t like pickles.  Which ought to mean that I don’t like pickle relish ... except I do.  I cannot explain this.  But I like pickle relish on hot dogs, I like pickle relish in deviled eggs—and, more relevantly, in egg salad—and pickle relish is an absolutely crucial ingredient in Thousand Islands dressing, which is one of my favorite dressings.⁶

But, here’s the thing: sweet pickle relish is not really healthy.  It’s usually sweetened with terrible things, and you really don’t need the sweet.  Honest.  I would not lie to you.  But you can’t buy non-sweet pickle relish ... unless you go to Whole Foods and spend a buttload of money.  And we’re not going to do that.  We’re just going to make pickle relish.

Which, as it turns out, is stupidly simple.  And here’s the thing about a jar full of dill pickles: it has 0 calories, and 0 fat, and 0 carbs.  Which means the pickle relish will have 0 all-that-stuff too.  Good luck getting that with your sweet relish.



And, with that, the shopping is over!  Next we can move on to equipment.

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1 Considering that our first grocery store post in this series was over 2 years ago, it’s a hell of a long trip indeed.

2 Remember that last caveat when we come to our egg salad.

3 You haven’t forgotten that I do the vast majority of my shopping at TJ’s, now, have you?

4 But not all experts, of course.  You’re never going to get all experts to agree on anything.

5 Also, if you’re going to cook with it, don’t forget that olive oil has a terrible smokepoint—worse even than butter—so you should only use it for cooking low and slow.

6 Note that, from a Whole30 perspective, Thousand Islands is completely cheating, unless you’ve found some Whole30-approved ketchup.  See the condiments post for more ideas on that.

Saladosity, Part 9: The Rest of the Cold Stuff

[This is the ninth post in a long series.  You may wish to start at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

Coming close to being done with the grocery store—honest.  Today we’re going to pick up a few refrigerated goods (other than the meats and cheeses, which we already covered).  I’ll try to keep it brief.¹

Dairy

Now, I know that some nutritional tribes shun dairy (most paleo, and in particular Whole30).  If that’s your flavor of food religion, then you can just skip this section.

Milk. I admit, I’ve taken to buying organic milk recently.  Not particularly because I can taste the difference, but I think mainly just because I’m using “organic” as a proxy for “treats their cows well.” Which is getting dangerous these days, as more and more “factory farming” outfits try to jump on the organic bandwagon.  Of course, “organic” also encompasses “rBST-free” and “not treated with antibiotics,” so at least I’m getting those.  And a bit of research on the old Internet tells me that (at least as of 2010), organic milk must come from cows that spend part of their lives roaming around freely, and that’s really the part that I want.  But there’s no doubt that, unlike the price differential between organic veggies and non-organic choices,² organic milk is quite a bit pricier than the alternative.  So if you’re looking to skip organic anywhere, here’s probably the best place.

Another consideration is lactose intolerance.  I personally don’t have any issues unless I consume milk in large quantities.³  However, at least one of my kids is pretty sensitive to the lactose, so we’re now buying lactose-free milk.  If they make organic lactose-free milk, I haven’t discovered it yet.  (But, if I do discover it somewhere, I’ll probably buy it.)

Then there’s the question of fat content: especially if you’re in one of the low-fat camps (like the Weight Watchers tribe), you probably care less about organic and lactose-free, and more about 1% or maybe even skim.⁴  I happen to think milk fat is in the category of “good fat,” but obviously opinions will vary widely.

The short answer is, get whatever milk you can get that fits your exact needs.  Maybe the only guideline that’s really useful across all the options is, buy local where you can.  Keep your local farmers in business, man.

Sour cream. Milk is nice and all, but sometimes you just gotta have some sour cream.  It’s excellent for dressings of all sorts, plus making homemade dips out of.  Again, I’ve been buying organic lately, and the only real downside of that is that it tends to separate on you.  If that disturbs you, first remind yourself that this is one of those things you just deal with because you’re eating actual food now.  Then, get a big spoon, and stir it up.  The end.  Seriously: if separated sour cream (or yogurt, or whatever) is the worst problem you’ve got, you’re one lucky individual.

Eggs

Here again, the main thing I personally look for is some indication that the chickens are being treated well.  To that end, I often favor “cage-free” over strictly organic.  Still can add a noticeable chunk to the price, but honestly I’ve come to really dig the taste of wherever my local TJ’s is getting their cage-free eggs from.  I like to buy the biggest ones I can get (the “jumbo” size, typically even larger than the “extra large”), and I happen to get brown where I live.  Honestly, there’s really no difference between brown and white eggs.  Just depends on the particular strain of chicken.  But there’s no difference in taste, or health value, or any of that.

I’ve heard it’s possible for eggs to go bad if you let them sit around long enough, but I wouldn’t know.  Eggs in our house never last that long.

Guacamole

Making your own guacamole has recently gotten so popular that it’s sending people to the emergency room.⁵  Well, I say “screw that.” Trader Joe’s has an absolutely divine guac which comes in 8oz packages, and even Costco has a really great option which comes in even handier 2 – 4oz cups.  Sure, I could make my own ... but this series is all about easy, right?  As long as the ingredient list is good (which it is in the both the options above), and it tastes good (both do), then what more do you really need?

Besides, guacamole vacuum-packed like either of the above options will keep in the fridge for several weeks, which is way more than your homemade stuff will.  That’ll be gray in under 24 hours.  (Note: You can still technically eat the guacamole when it’s gray.  It just doesn’t look very appetizing.)

And that’s it for the cold stuff.  Next time, we’ll do our very last bit of shopping.  For realsies.

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1 But, you know: no promises.

2 At least in my part of the country.  Your mileage, obviously, may vary.

3 For instance, I had to give up eating big bowls of cereal, even long before I decided to cut out most grains, because the resulting cramps just weren’t worth it.

4 Personally, I say: if you’re going to drink skim milk, may as well just add some white dye to water and call it a day.  But, hey: you do you.

5 And that was but one of literally dozens of articles I could have linked you to.

Saladosity, Part 8: Some Condiments, You Just Want to Buy

[This is the eighth post in a long series.  You may wish to start at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]


In our quest to make the perfect salads, there’s still more shopping to do.  When it comes to condiments, we’re going to make a lot of them ourselves: mayonnaise, pickle relish, and most of the actual salad dressings.  But that doesn’t mean we’re going to make everything from scratch.  Remember: our #1 goal is to make making salads easy.  So if I tell you that you have to start growing your own mustard seed or whatever, that’s not easy.  So we’re going to make things ourselves where it’s simple to do so, and/or where it’s easier than trying to find quality condiments in your local store.  Where that’s not feasible, though, we will not hesitate one whit to just buy the stuff.  We’re eating good, and we’re eating simple.  Buying a few premade items is not going to endanger that.

Salad Dressings

Yes, there are actually a (very) few salad dressings that I like to buy intead of make.  Specifically, two: a feta cheese dressing, and a Tuscan dressing.

Now, both of these come from my local Trader Joe’s,^* and they are (not at all coincidentally) the only two dressings that I’ve found there that have neither 1) soybean oil, nor 2) any added sweeteners.  If you’re avoiding dairy due to strict paleo/Whole30-ness, then the feta cheese dressing is out.  The Tuscan, however, should be good for all the nutritional tribes.

Now, remember I said  last time that, if you buy bleu cheese crumbles, you don’t actually need bleu cheese dressing?  This was a little bit of a white lie: you don’t need a dressing which is bleu cheese specifically, but what you do still need is a dressing which is creamy, and not strongly flavored so it won’t compete with the natural piquancy of the bleu cheese.  TJ’s feta dressing is exactly that.  You could try other varieties—I think a ranch would be too much, plus you’re never going to find ranch dressing without added sugars, but there could well be other options at your disposal.  Mainly you just want no crappy soybean oil, and hopefully no sugar (in any of its myriad forms).  TJ’s feta dressing has olive oil and canola oil (not the best, but better than soybean, corn, or peanut), and no sweeteners at all.  It doesn’t taste strongly of feta either, despite the name, and it’s a perfect complement for a bleu cheese salad.

Tuscan dressing, on the other hand, is just a slight step up from Italian (meaning it’s not much more than oil and vinegar).  The oil in this case is sunflower (good) “and/or” canola (less good, but still not awful).  The vinegar is balsamic.  And the “step up” is tomatoes and “spices” that edge it more towards tasting a bit like Worcestershire sauce, or maybe steak sauce without the sweetness.  It’s very tart, in fact, so I advise you use it in small quantities, which means it has a built-in mechanism to keep you from overindulging.  And, if you’re in the calorie-counter tribe, it’s only 50 calories per tablespoon, so that works out well all ‘round.  When we make our Tuscan salad, I’ll show you how to balance out that tartness in a very pleasant way.

Mustard

You know, mustard is some kind of friggin’ miracle food.  It contains no sugar, no carbs, and no fat; brown mustard has 5 calories per teaspoon and yellow mustard has zero.  At least that what my mustard bottles tell me—and guess where I bought ’em?—and, if yours are telling you a different story, toss ’em out and go shoppping for better options.  On top of all that, it’s seriously yummy, and it helps things emulsify (crucial when we get around to making our own mayonnaise).  About the only thing even remotely objectionable is that some forms of brown mustard (dijon, poupon, etc) may contain white wine, which some nutritional tribes (e.g. Whole30) may prohibit.  But that’s easy enough to work around.

You will need yellow mustard for sure, and brown mustard probably.  My particular yellow mustard happens to be organic, but I’m not sure I can taste the difference there, honestly.  But I don’t think there even is a non-organic version, and it’s still cheap enough, so why not?  My choice of brown mustard happens not to have any wine, but honestly I wouldn’t care if it did—that’s one of the Whole30 precepts that I tossed out the window a long time ago.

Ketchup

Now, the first thing I learned about ketchup when I started this whole journey was that it’s impossible to make ketchup without adding something to sweeten it.  If you don’t add some form of sugar, you just end up with thinned out tomato sauce, which is definitively not ketchup.  If you happen to be really seriously into Whole30, you’re probably already aware that there’s a company out there that makes ketchup using dates, which, being fruit and technically not an added “sweetener,” makes it Whole30-safe.  I’ve never tried it, but then I’m not that seriously into Whole30, so your mileage may vary.  You can also try making your own ketchup, but trust me when I tell you that it is a) a huge pain in the ass, and b) never ends up tasting particularly like ketchup.  As far as I’m concerned, ketchup springs into existence at some magical spring, probably underneath Teresa Heinz Kerry’s house.  Just buy the stuff.  Buy only the stuff that’s made with “organic cold-pressed raw cane juice” or whatever if you must, but honestly: it won’t make that much difference.

We’re going to use ketchup to make a version of a Thousand Islands dressing, and that is literally it.  Other than that, I never touch the stuff.  But Thousand Islands is pretty crucial for many things, particularly chef’s salad.

Vinegar

Now, many people absolutely adore vinegar.  I am not one of them.  For many years, I was convinced that I hated all vinegar.  Red wine vinegar I really don’t like, and apple cider vinegar I detest.  Balsamic vinegar I tolerate, but I’m not a huge fan.  However, I recognize that some recipes really need vinegar, both for its acidic qualities and its sour tang.  And I eventually discovered that white wine vinegar is pretty decent ... I’m not about to start drinking it straight or anything, but it’ll be a crucial component for at least one of our dressings.

The white wine vinegar I buy is called “white balsamic,” which I find oxymoronic.  Also its cheap price leads me to distrust the “balsamic” part, which I believe got thrown in there just to make it sound fancy.  The ingredient list is nice and short, but it’s not organic.  Still very good though.

Honey

When it comes to honey, what you really should be doing is buying local.  Find a farm or something like that nearby that sells honey made by local bees from local flowers.  Many people believe that eating local honey helps boost your immune system, but, even if you don’t buy that, it’s still a valid point that you should be helping to keep your local apiaries solvent, who in turn keep colonies of bees thriving, and I don’t think there’s very many people who actually think the recent decreases in bee populations are a good thing.

We have a local place that both bottles their own honey and also gets some varities imported, so they have a great selection.  You can even go there and do a honey-tasting.  Different kinds of honey absolutely taste different, so experiment to find out what works for you.

For our purposes, we’re going to use it to make our own honey mustard dressing.  For the most part, the crap that you have been buying—probably to give to your kids for their chicken nuggets—is not very good.  If you’ve found anything that tastes good (like, say, Ken’s), then it’s full of crap (like, say, soybean oil and high fructose corn syrup, which are the first two ingredients on that delicious bottle of Ken’s).  Contrariwise, if you found anything whose ingredient list delighted you, you almost certainly were insanely disappointed by the underwhelming taste (like, say, the Sprouts store brand).  Well, as it turns out, making your own honey mustard is not so hard, plus you get to tweak it: perhaps you like yours sweeter, or tangier, or creamier, or whatever.

So start by buying yourself some nice honey.  I prefer a sweeter variety for this purpose: perhaps an orange blossom, or a nice clover.  But get whatever you personally like.



Next time, we’ll finish  up the refrigerated portion of our shopping.

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* You may recall that I’m pretty much a walking TJ’s commercial.

And now for something not nearly as completely different as it was last time ...

Well, I have to bail on another post this week, unfortunately.  I just (as in hours ago) finished a long project for $work,^* and there’s just no time to work in a proper post before the weekend is out.

So, let’s play another little game of “Last Two,” which I invented about two years ago when I also didn’t have time to do a proper post.

Last two movies I watched:  We (meaning the whole family) just watched The Little Prince on Netflix, which we all thought was pretty good.  Even our eldest, jaded teen that they are, managed to keep their earbuds out of their ears long enough to get to the end.  Higher praise I cannot imagine.  Before that ... I think it was The Last Witch Hunter, which is sort of brainless entertainment, except it had XXX, Frodo, and Ygritte, which is not a bad cast for brainless sword fighting and car chases and nonsensical explosions (considering it’s a movie about witches).  But I’m not particularly hard on movies.

Last two audiobooks I listened to:  Well, I just finished Bitten, which is the first in the Women of the Otherworld series.  I wanted to try it out because I’d heard good things about, but I found it distinctly “meh.”  I’ll try at least one more to see if it improves, but it was a little too Harlequin-romance-y for my tastes.  Not bad ... just not great.  Before that I blew through Around the World in 80 Days, as a palate cleanser after coming off of The Android’s Dream by John Scalzi (which is the one I would really recommend: it was a bit slow for the first 2 or 3 chapters, then it took off like a bat out of hell and was amazing straight through to the end, plus I’ve already talked about what an awesome reader Wil Wheaton is).  80 Days is one of the few Verne books I never read when I was younger, and I picked it up at one of those buy-1-get-1-free-but-only-certain-titles sales at Audiobook.  One is always a little surprised by the casual racism when one reads a book published in, say, 1873, but it was actually the casual classism that irked me more.  ‘Cause, you know, Phileas Fogg is an English gentleman, and Passepartout is just a servant.  And here’s a fun fact that you might not know if you haven’t read the book: Fogg hired Passepartout the day they left on the journey.  So they go off and have all these adventures and Passepartout trusts Fogg implicitly depsite barely knowing him ... because he’s a gentleman.  It’s sort of ... disturbing, really.  But a sort of fun book nonetheless.  Just a bit anachronistically jarring when you’re reading it 150 years later.

Last two real books I read:  Dude, I hardly ever read real books any more.  But, weirdly, I’m right in the middle of one right now: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.  I wasn’t going to even start it until next week, but I made the mistake of reading the first several pages to see if the play format was going to work for me, and I got sucked in.  It’s not as good as sometihng actually written by Rowling, but it’s her story, so it’s still interesting enough to make you not want to put it down.  Before that ... I honestly can’t remember.

Last two bands I discovered:  Well, I just (as in minutes ago) discovered Pomplamoose.  Not sure how I never heard of them before, as they’re apparently a bit of a big deal on the Internet.  Everyone else in my house had heard of them, apparently (The Mother is the one who pointed me at them, actually).  I’m just a bit slow, I guess.  Prior to that, I guess I would say Aurora, who I was bit taken with after her appearance on Colbert.  I don’t think it was the song she played on The Late Show, but “Conqueror” is pretty amazing.

Last two albums I bought:  All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend by Aurora, obviously, and before that I think Still Night, Still Light by Au Revoir Simone.  Whom I also discoverd thanks to Colbert, because one third of Au Revoir Simone is now one third of Nice as Fuck, who was on Colbert last week (or the week before, maybe ... I forget).

Last two restaurant meals I ate:  Does Jack in the Box count as a restaurant?  I tried their new portabello-mushroom burger thing.  They keep advertising it all over the TV there, and it looks so good on the commercial ... but don’t do it.  It’s a bad, bad idea.  Before that, no family meal since last week (Topper’s pizza last Sunday—and, may I say, if you happen to live in Southern California and haven’t yet eaten at Topper’s, put down your computer right this instant and order; you won’t be sorry).  I suppose I ate out with my coworkers on Tuesday (I was sick the latter part of the week), but damned if I can remember what we ate.  Japanese, maybe?

Last two real animals I saw (excluding family this time):  I rescued a widow spider out of my shower this morning.  It wasn’t a black widow, but I’m not 100% sure if it was a brown widow or a red widow or what.  But it definitely had the characteristic widow shape.  Before that ... hmmm ... yesterday, I think it was, I saw a bright red dragonfly that swooped in and landed on one of The Mother‘s planter hooks.  It was pretty cool.

Last two television shows I watched:  Hmmm ... not counting watching things like Sesame Street with the kids, I would probably say SCTV Network 90 and Whose Line Is It Anyway?.  Last two shows I watched with another adult ... probably the season finales of Preacher and Stranger Things.  You totally have to check out Stranger Things if you haven’t yet, by the way.  It’s insanely good.

Last two podcasts I listened to:  I don’t really listen to podcasts, per se.  Judge John Hodgman sometimes.  But I do listen to streaming versions of NPR shows, so if we can count that, I was just listening to Car Talk in the car today.  They’re on repeats now, of course, since Tom died.  But I still enjoy it.  Before that ... well, I just recently discovered Nerd HQ and I watched a shit-ton of Zachary Levi’s “Conversations for a Cause” panels, which they thoughtfully videoed and put up on YouTube.  Again, not really a podcast, and, again, not sure how I only became aware of this recently, but they’re pretty entertaining to watch (top pick from the 2016 set: Felicia Day), and I find Levi just as entertaining as Hardwick, and maybe even a bit more endearing, somehow.

And that’s about it.  Hopefully that’ll tide you over until next week.  And, honestly, this post is long enough that I don’t even really consider it “interstitial,” so, you know ... be happy.

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* Technically speaking, the project is not done.  But it’s done enough to make my boss happy once again, and I think I can take the remainder of the project at a more reasonable pace.

Saladosity, Part 7: The Savory Proteins

[This is the seventh post in a long series.  You may wish to start at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]


So far in our journey to salad nirvana, we’ve bought a whole lotta produce, plus some trail mix fodder.  Now it’s time to pick out some proteins: meat and cheeses.

Meats

The main thing we’re going to need meat for is our chef’s salad.  In my opinion, you can’t make chef’s salad without meat, but your opinion may vary, especially if you’re a member of the Vegan tribe.  We won’t need meat for any other salad (although I’ll throw in a few optional ideas), so, if you happen to be a firm vegan, you could skip this particular salad (and this whole section), and not be any the worse for wear.

For those of you still with me, let me tell you what you’re going to need for the perfect chef’s salad.  Finding good pre-sliced, deli-style meat is a challenge, even in a relatively good shopping environment such as Trader Joe’s.  If you’re a TJ’s fan too, I’ll give you exact brand names.  If not, you’ll just have to do basically what I did: spend 10 or 15 minutes at the lunchmeat section of your favorite store reading labels.  What you basically want is to find the meats that:

• don’t have any added sweeteners, and
• don’t have any preservatives (e.g. sulfites, nitrates, etc).

This will be remarkably challenging.  When you think about eating a nice turkey sandwich, it may seem insane to you that anyone would want to stick any sort of sugar into your slices of turkey.  But nearly every label you check will tell you that it has molasses, or honey, or just plain sugar.  It’s downright weird, once you start realizing how much meat has been pre-sweetened, ostensibly for your tastebuds.  Trust me: your tastebuds don’t need that, nor do they particularly want it.  Meat isn’t supposed to be sweet.  It’s supposed to be ... well, meaty.  Savory, and juicy, and just plain yummy.  But not sweet.  Yeck.

And, when it comes to preservatives, lunchmeat is some of the worst offenders in the store.  Lunchmeat needs to have a longer shelf-life than, say, ground beef.  So they fill it full of chemicals to make it last.  You don’t need that.  Pay a little extra for the preservative-free meat and just eat it quickly.  This will probably not be a problem, as it will be so tasty.

You will have to work extra hard to find meat without any added sweeteners or preservatives, but you’ll be better off in the long run: not only is it almost certainly healthier by nearly any tribe’s standards, but it’ll taste better too.  Win-win.

Turkey.  At my Trader Joe’s, I have 3 brand options for sliced turkey: Applegate, Columbus, and the TJ’s store brand.  Of these, only Applegate fits my criteria.  Columbus has brown sugar, not to mention a moderately frightening list of -ites and -ates, including sodium nitrite, sodium phosphate, and potassium chloride.  The TJ’s brand has sugar and disodium phosphate.  Applegate, on the other hand, has no sugar, and only carrageenan in the “what’s that?” department.¹  Carrageenan isn’t technically a preservative, and it comes from seaweed, so I give it a pass.²  Applegate makes an organic version of their sliced turkey, but my TJ’s doensn’t carry it.  I would probably buy it, if it wasn’t too much more expensive than the other kind.  But so far I’ve been very pleased with this product even in its non-organic form.

Roast beef.  I only have 2 options here: Columbus and TJ’s.  Again, the Columbus is a bit of a mess; it has brown sugar and/or dextrose (yet another cleverly disguised name for “sugar”), plus potassium acetate and potassium lactate, plus some varities throw in sodium phosphate as well.  Happily, the TJ’s brand is much nicer here in the roast beef department than it was in the turkey area: the worst thing on the ingredient list is xanthan gum, which is not too awful in comparison.  Again, no organic options, but I’m okay with that.

That’s all we’ll need for our chef’s salad, but there’s a few other options I can recommend.

First of all, what are you going to do with any leftover slices of meat you have?  You can make sandwiches out of them, of course, but that involves grains and carbs,³ which you probably don’t want to deal with.  Happily, I’ve discovered that I don’t need bread to enjoy a sandwich: I just make a “cheesewich” instead.  Cheesewich (patent pending) is my personal concoction for enjoying sandwiches without bread.  The concept is extremely simple: Get yourself some decent sliced cheese that isn’t going to fall apart on you, take two slices, put your meat in between them, then eat it.  The end.  Brilliant, no?  I’ve honestly found that I don’t even miss the bread any more.  A turkey and roast beef cheesewich is really awesome, and I’ve come to like it even more without the bread.  Another excellent choice for the cheesewich is black forest ham.  Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to find any without added sweeteners, but, if you’re willing to overlook that (or cheat a little every once in a while), a ham-and-cheese cheesewich makes a pretty awesome lunch, especially when paired with a small salad such as the ones in this series.

Now, while none of the salads I’m going show you other than my chef’s salad will require meat, that’s not to say that you can’t add meat to any of them.  One excellent choice is canned chicken.  It’s precooked, easy to use, and typically has a ridiculously short ingredient list (look for something like: chicken, water, salt—this is what the Trader Joe’s brand has).  You can toss this into a salad as is, or add some simple seasonings first and maybe even give it a short trip in the microwave to add a hot element to an otherwise cold salad.

Cheese

Havarti (sliced).  When it comes to sliced cheese, Havarti is my new best friend.  Way more interesting than Monterey Jack (which is hard to find sliced anyway), typically firmer than provolone, more solid (and less ... distinct, shall we say) than Swiss—it’s the perfect pre-sliced white cheese for our chef’s salad, and excellent for cheesewiches as well.  Don’t get the “light” stuff: it tastes awful.⁴

Mexican blend (shredded).  Typically this will be a blend of cheddar, Monterey Jack, asadero and queso blanco (although some crappier brands may try to sneak in Colby or even mozzarella on you).  The TJ’s store brand is pretty good.  This is crucial for our Mexican salad.  Note that nearly all shredded cheese uses corn starch to keep it from clumping.  I generally accept this as an exception to my “no grains” policy, as it’s a pretty small amount.

Bleu cheese (crumbled).  So far I have yet to find a bleu cheese dressing that I like that’s also free from disreputable ingredients.  But happily I’ve found that, if you buy blue cheese crumbles and just add them directly to the salad, you don’t actually need bleu cheese dressing.

Feta cheese (crumbled).  Feta cheese is remarkably versatile; you may recall that it’s a crucial ingredient back in our original salad.  I still like the “Mediterranean herbs” version that TJ’s sells, but whatever you can lay hands on is good.  Just look out for preservatives.

Parmesan (grated).  We won’t be adding this directly to a salad, but it’s a vital ingredient in one of our dressings.  I actually like the blend of parmesan and romano cheese that TJ’s sells, but choose your own favorite.  As always, be wary of unnecessary preservatives.

As far as other cheeses go, we won’t need any, but I can always recommend a good sliced cheddar as being excellent for cheesewiches (I actually make all my cheesewiches with one slice of cheddar and one of Havarti), and you could try some crumbled goat cheese instead of feta if you’re into that sort of thing.  Personally I find goat cheese to be a bit strong for my tastes, but to each his own.

Storage

Typically you want to put your meat and cheese into the refrigerator drawer that’s not the fruit drawer (where you’ve got the humidity cranked up) or the veggie drawer (where you’ve got it cranked down).  But the main thing you want is a good, airtight seal.  If your meat comes in one of those packages with a little piece of plastic that “seals to keep in freshness,” screw that: stick it in a Ziploc bag.  For me, my roast beef will fit nicely in a quart-sized Ziploc, as long as I cut off the corners with a pair of scissors first.  (If I don’t, the sharp corners will tear holes in the bag.)  The Applegate turkey thankfully comes with its own Ziploc-style sealer.  The black forest ham is a long package that requires a gallon-size Ziploc.  Meats stored this way should last a few weeks.  The ham will eventually get white, crusty stuff on it (this is the fat congealing), and the roast beef will just turn shiny and make rainbows in the fluorescent kitchen lights.  The turkey will be hard to identify visually.  Trust your nose for all the meats: if it doesn’t smell yummy, toss it out.⁵

If you don’t use an entire can of the canned chicken, you’ll need to put those leftovers in your own sealed containers (either Tupperware-style, or Rubbermaid-style glass containers if you’re trying to avoid plastic).

The grated and crumbled cheeses come in plastic containers that seal pretty well.  I can keep the grated parmesan roughly forever, but the crumbled cheeses will start to smell a bit sour if they last more than 3 weeks or so (at which point, toss ’em).  The sliced and shredded cheeses typically have a Ziploc-style sealer, but really make sure you get as much air out of those packages as you can before you seal them.  Air is your enemy.  (Well, actually aerobic bacteria are your enemy.  So squish all the air out of the package and starve those little buggers out.)  For the sliced cheeses (or the meats), squish the living hell out of the packages to remove maximal air.  For the shredded cheeses, be a little more gentle, or else you’ll end up with a giant rubber cheese mass that won’t work in your salad nearly as well.  If you do a good job keeping the air out, the sliced and shredded cheeses should also last several weeks.  When they give up the ghost, they will nearly always start growing mold.  Unless you’re a qualified penicillin extractor or something, that means it’s time to toss ’em out.



Next time around, there’s still more shopping to do!  Next up: condiments.

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1 The ingredient list for my particular package has only 4 ingredients, actually: turkey, water, salt, and carrageenan, in that order.

2 However, Whole30 does not.  Carrageenan is specifically prohibited on Whole30, so bear that in mind if you’re trying to follow the program strictly.

3 Which aspect of the bread you consider worse depends on which of the nutritional tribes you’ve joined.  And let’s not even get into the whole gluten debate.

4 Of course, this is true of “light” cheese in general.  If you’re a staunch member of the low-fat tribe, this will be difficult for you.  But hopefully you at least believe that fat from cheese is “good” fat.

5 Or give it to your dogs.  Remember: their digestive systems can kill bacteria that would make us sick.