Tomorrow is a work/travel day, but we have one scheduled for Saturday, and the parade is Sunday.
I would love to hear some of your favorite salad combinations.
My current binge is romaine, roasted red pepper, marinated mushrooms, fresh mozzarella cheese, chicken (or Black Forest ham sometimes) green olives, oregano, balsamic vinegar. Yum.
I also like a spinach salad with bacon, boiled egg, mushrooms, red onion ad o&v. Yum.
I like a “steak salad” using the sliced grilled steak, tomatoes, onion, mushrooms and o&v
A new favorite at my house. A chopped style salad- cucumber, tomato, radish, red or yellow pepper( whatever one I have), green onion, parsley, cilantro with a homemade dressing. Just before serving take a can of garbanzo beans and dust with a spice blend of cumin,cardamom and allspice. Warm in a saucepan with a 1 tbsp of olive oil. Serve warm chickpeas on top of salad. I sometimes add a few chunks of feta on top.
The dressing- 6tbsp olive oil, grated zest of 1 lemon, 2 tbsp lemon juice, 1 1/2 tbsp sherry vinegar,1 clove crushed garlic, 1 tsp sugar
For exact recipe Google Spiced chickpeas and fresh vegetable salad by Ottolengli. I don’t make the recipe exact. It’s very forgiving. Add vegetables you like and will eat. Leave out what you don’t like.
@mom60 , thanks that sounds good!
Ottolenghi has some great salads. I love this one with cauliflower. http://www.ottolenghi.co.uk/roasted-cauliflower-hazelnut-salad-shop.
The method is roast the cauliflower with some olive oil at 425 degees for about 25 minutes until they are golden brown. Toast the hazelnuts for about 10 minutes in a 325 degree oven or on the stove. Careful they burn easily! Make a vinegraitte of the remaining ingredients and toss in the nuts and cauliflower when they are room temperature. (But do buy the book, it’s terrific!)
I agree with Mathmom- buy the book.
I haven’t tried the cauliflower salad yet. Do you think it would work with another nut? My D comes for dinner once a week and loves a lot of his recipes but is allergic to hazelnuts.
I’m sure it would be good with other nuts. The hazelnuts are fairly assertive, but also sort of sweet, so I think pecans might be a good match. But I’m sure walnuts would also be fine. (We always make baklava with a lot of pecans on the theory that if they had pecans in the middle east they’d use them! Our Lebanese friends agree. 
)
I recently went to a cooking demonstration by an Indian-American who combines a lot of Indian/South Asian spicing with American ingredients. She’d made what she called a salad (and I’d call more of a salsa) with nectarines, corn, black beans, chilies, red onions, lime, chaat masala and cilantro. But if you don’t have nectarines any fruit would do. She made pakoras (vegetable fritters) with radishes which I’d never seen before. She has a blog called Spice Chronicles which is worth checking out. There’s a salad recipe there with radishes, mint and chive blossoms that looks good, though I think my chive blossoms are just about gone.
Very delicious sounding … Yum. I am kick starting my walking with my walk/talk friend. We walked 15,000 steps today and yesterday. I also did a bunch of intense carpet cleaning (due to older dog not remembering the rules). I now just need to keep on eating healthy and these are right up my alley.
I love the healthy salad ideas. I still haven’t given up my daily glass of wine, but if this walking doesn’t start to show in some quantitative way, I am going to have to nix that little delicacy.
Sounds yummy! WLked a lot of steps yesterday and today (12,000 so far today). Keep up the good work everyone.
Birthday celebrating put the food tracking on the back burner, but it was worth it!
Happy birthday, JYM! I heard that calories don’t count on your birthday, but I may be making that up.
Had to laugh at an article in today’s paper about the dangers of excessive exercise - not a problem on this thread! Some of the warning signs about an unhealthy compulsion to exercise:
- you feel anxious and irritable when you take a day off
- you run or exercise despite significant injury
- exercise - plus thinking about it and planning it - consumes your day
OK. You’ve been warned!
Mostly anything in “excess” tends to not be good for you, right? Excess eating, excess alcohol, excess sedentary lifestyle…
And one person’s excess is not another’s! It’s all relative.
So what IS suggested to do in the article? (no link so I can’t see for myself - unless you want to share the link)
LOL @Marilyn. I’m very grateful that you warned us. 
LOL @VaBluebird. I will take you at your word that calories don’t count on your birthday!
Wish you had posted the link to the article. Frankly, it sounds like a rehash of old news. Anyone who has participated in a structured fitness program should be familiar and comfortable with the concept taking adequate recovery time, of having active recovery days or even taking a day off. Anything done to excess is counterproductive and potentially harmful, including fad diets, out of control cheat days and the whole host of uninformed behaviors that seem to pop up as stylish in the pop culture world of fitness and weight management.
Here’s the link: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/jun/27/exercising-to-excess It’s a feature article by a freelance writer and I thought there were some interesting points. Also that WLFD posters would appreciate it! (And that others might not.)
@mathmom and @mom60- what is the book you are recommending??
We now have a Sprouts, Fresh Market, Whole foods, Trader Joes and several fruit/vegetable stands nearby. So many places to get fresh fruits and veggies! Peaches today were still 50 cents a pound! Love this time of year!
Read the article. It’s a good article with comments by some very respected people in the world of professional fitness. It essentially discusses obsessive behaviors in understandable terms. Any trainer worth the investment of time and money will help a client understand the importance of recovery time. Even elite level competitive athletes must balance their training. Where there is often a lot of misperceptions is that those who are casual exercisers look at the volume and intensity of training by those who have performance goals or who are competing and will mistake it for compulsive behavior. It’s not. It’s focused training with specific objectives. I’m fortunate. None of the athletes I train with or those that I have my fitness discussions with on other threads fall into the obsessive end of the spectrum notwithstanding the frequency and volume of the training they do.
Thanks for the link Marilyn. After reading it I have to think, there’s daily exercise (getting 10,000 steps in or running/biking/walking a couple miles or doing 50 pushups every night before bed) and then there is DAILY EXERCISE ( multiple strenuous exercise classes, 10 miles running daily, etc.).
Also the article talks about the balance of food/calories to exercise. I can give a nod to people who exercise daily - and also plan their food intake for that - and not nod to people who are only worried about a number on the scale and are exercising excessively AND eating barely anything.
Obsessive behaviors can be debilitating. But, less than obsessive? Nothing wrong with a good challenge to improve your health and fitness!