30 days of Salad

Tax season is upon me. It has gotten busy very fast. I no longer have little bits of free time to browse, read, take walks, or have energy to do much at home. I will soon, it just takes me a while to adjust! There are a few projects I have decided to take on as a result this January :)

1) Take time on my lunch break to get out and go for a walk downtown
2) Keep things organized and useful at home by
   a) planning my weekly meals in menu form again
   b) keeping my morning schedule a bit tighter
   c) simplifying as much as I feel the need

and perhaps the most interesting goal/experiment I have is

3) Eating a salad every day for lunch

Huh. Never thought I'd do it. I'm not much of a salad eater. But I've grown to like a few, and in this effort, I came up with a list of ideas to have some variety :) I hope to try:

• Homemade Ceasar Salad
• Taco salads
• Pasta salads
• fruit salads
• and various dressed lettuce salads

For my first salad, I kept it fairly straightforward. I just picked out some cukes, tomatoes, and sunflower seeds to at least make it palatable. With Ranch dressing, it was fine. But now, today is my third day of that (minus the cukes and tomatoes which are gone), and I'm ready for a change.

Tonight I hope to try making my own croutons and salad dressing....in the high hopes of having a Ceasar salad tomorrow. (so far, of lettuce salads, that's my favorite).

Meanwhile, I found these welcoming sites:

Reluctant Gourmet
Cook's.com dressing
What's cooking America recipe

The only appaling thing (because I am not a gourmet, I do not like this) is that the dressing uses a raw egg yolk and anchovies.

No thanks.

I will stick to white dressing flavored strongly with Parmesan cheese. :) That will be good enough for me!