High Protein Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette

Two of Many Varieties: His & Hers

Recipe Inspired by Nob Hill Markets

Salads! Always healthful, and now in season. For a while I’d been dependent on a pre-made Nob Hill salad for my after-work late lunch. And I felt plenty guilty about the amount of plastic containers I’d recycle. Then I looked at the ingredients and did the math. I didn’t like the lentils in the salad, nor the skimpy amount of egg, tomato, and chickpeas. I thought I could change things up and add avocado. Plus, I could upgrade to organic ingredients. Oddly enough, since I’ve been making my own, our local Nob Hill has stopped carrying the salad. Was my consumption driving their business? Somehow I doubt it.

Grilled Tuna Salad

Recipe Adapted from The Barefoot Contessa at Home

When I think of tuna salad, I think of the soggy mayo-rich sandwiches of my youth: canned tuna on spongy white bread. Nothing wrong with them, especially with crunchy celery and spicy chives added, but summer inspires a fresher menu. Ina Garten, TV’s Barefoot Contessa to the rescue, with a tuna salad that features two summertime favorites: cool veggie salads and charcoal broiled steaks—in this case, tuna steaks—with a dab of Asian inspired dressing. Vive la difference!

Chocolate Mousse Surprise

Mousse "Martinis" with Strawberries

Recipe by Sheryl Crow & Chuck White

What would you do for money? Would you stick with a job for 15 years despite minimal pay increases? Would you be okay if after 15 years management downsized you into a windowless, and airless office because a telecommuting manager wanted a bigger office with windows? Would you agree, after 15 years of keeping track of your own time, to check in with your boss every time you entered or left the office for your requisite breaks and your bathroom time? Would you believe management when they told you that these changes were for “teamwork?” After 15 years of “outstanding” evaluations as an independent creative professional serving a large group, would you believe that you need to be watched more carefully for your own good? Would you give up your telecommute privileges so that you could sit in a small, dark office every day? Sigh. Neither would I. Goodbye, day job.

Strawberry and Spring Vegetable Salad

First Salad Attempt: Made with Chopped Nuts while Intoxicated

Recipe by Robin

In a way, creating recipes is like reinventing the wheel. Somewhere, sometime, someone has put together a dish similar to what you’re creating. It might have even been you, especially if you belong to a CSA farm and get similar veggies for weeks at a time from a local farm. And so it is with strawberries in salad. I’ve combined them with spinach, Parmesan and pine nuts, with radicchio, butter lettuce, and feta, and simplest of all with arugula and goat cheese. And yet a bounty of mixed spring lettuce from our DIY square foot garden plus 5 pints of strawberries and some basil from our CSA inspired me to make yet another strawberry salad.