Eat Plants

After reading Food Rules by Michael Pollan and Food Matters by Mark Bittman I have decided to follow their rules and suggestions. My new mantra: "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" (thanks, Mr. Pollan). In some ways I've been following this mantra for a while, mostly through not eating much meat. It's annoying to cook and kind of expensive and surprisingly easy to give up! I will admit only to purchasing Wegmans marinated steaks and chicken breasts, 'cause they're so freakin' good.

But now I'm going to make an effort to eat a lot more plants. Witness tonight's dinner (please excuse the steam, and check out that plantain over by the fork!):

I definitely ate my colors!

Now historically, I haven't been the biggest supporter of plants. The list of veggies I didn't like as a child is quite long (carrots, brussels sprouts, spinach, celery, etc.). Currently I enjoy cooked carrots (see above photo), spinach, and I can sometimes manage brussels sprouts if they're covered in other stuff like butter. But I still don't like celery.

Salads I can manage, especially when they're full of chopped veggies and topped with cheese. Unfortunately, salads are not easy to make, what with all of the washing and seed removal and chopping. It's not something you can just whip up before dashing out the door to work. My solution? To pre-make a week's worth of salads on Sunday and bring the dressing with me in my lunch bag.

It's easy, simple, and requires only an hour of my Sunday afternoon. With a head of lettuce, two roma tomatoes, one green bell pepper, and some feta cheese, I can make four or five servings of salad for my week.

I've also made a sweet salad with lettuce, mandarin orange slices, dried cranberries and goat cheese. Use any toppings you like and you can assemble everything, including the cheese, ahead of time. Then just whisk the tupperware from your fridge and head off to work with a salad! I always bring something else too, because these salads are not big enough to be a single lunch.

After a few weeks of salad-making it occurred to me that I should consider making my own dressing! So I looked up a simple recipe in Fannie Farmer and have been creating my own dressing every since. It's the easiest thing ever and doesn't even require refrigeration.

You'll need a half cup of olive oil, two tablespoons of vinegar (your choice), half teaspoon of salt, and pepper to taste. Add the salt to the vinegar and let stand for a few minutes, then whisk that mixture into the oil. So far I've tried balsamic vinegar and red wine vinegar, with great results. I actually use an old bottle of Trader Joe's salad dressing to house my new dressings.