Carrying on with my prepared salads reviews:
This one is by Marketside and is called Spinach Dijon.
Ingredients: spinach, eggs, shredded Monterey Jack-Colby Cheese, chow mein noodles, almonds, sweetened dried cranberries, and sweet onion dressing.
The dressing is just sweet enough to cover the earthy taste of the spinach.
This salad is one of my faves in the line. If you like raw spinach, you’ll love this one!
This salad, by Marketside (a WalMart brand), and very likely sourced from Taylor Farms has a fresh, and only slightly sweet flavour, despite the sweetened ingredients.
This one has: Spring mix (leaf lettuce and arugula), feta cheese, herb seasoned flatbread strips, sweetened, dried cranberries, candied walnuts, and raspberry vinaigrette dressing.
Although arugula isn’t among my fave greens, the sweet bits in this salad nicely mask it.
Yesterday, I finally found enough time to get back into my macaron groove again.
I especially enjoy making them when we’re in Texas because there are so many special occasions we’re here for, so I can make a great variety. Our friends here also enjoy them, so there are several birthdays to make them for as gifts.
I wanted to make these for Halloween but we’ve been extremely busy since we arrived, so, because I brought the candy corn with me from Canada, I decided to make them anyways. Hopefully they’ll be acceptable as my dessert contribution for our table at the big Thanksgiving pot luck here in our park.
Each winter, we eat far more salads than in the summer.
Why? It’s because prepared salads are abundant here in south Texas.
Taylor Farms makes a variety of single serving and double serving salads.
The part we enjoy the most, is that we can enjoy a variety of salads without having to buy all of the ingredients separately and then risk them going to waste if not used in a timely manner.
For the next few “foodie Friday” posts, I’ll feature and review different pre-made salads that we enjoy.
My feature photo is of the single serving Everything Chopped Salad from Taylor Farms.
Ingredients: Romaine lettuce, grilled white meat chicken, carrot, red cabbage, sharp white cheddar cheese, cheese and garlic seasoned crouton crumbles, everything bagel seasoning, and ranch dressing. *No synthetic colours or high fructose corn syrup*
These salads, available at WalMart, come in a disposable plastic bowl, but I prefer to plate them.
My review: I love that all of the ingredients are separated in the packaging, so nothing is soggy. This one had great flavour and crunch. Although they contain some cooked chicken, don’t expect more than a tablespoon or so of small cubes of meat in the single serving size. The cheese adds extra protein.
At under $3 USD, it’s good bang for your buck.
This week, we’ve been going over to Mexico for dental appointments.
It’s only a 20 minute drive from our home.
My favourite part of this is that we can once more enjoy authentic Mexican food. We didn’t get across once last winter, so now we’re making up for lost time.
I had some problems with my feature photo because of the shadows cast on the plate. I’ll be sure to avoid that next time.
Each of us ordered our fave dish : enchiladas for hubs and chile relleno for me.
We forgot that we could order one dish, split it, and easily have enough food for lunch.
Practise makes better.
Because the price of avocados and the variability of their freshness at home in Canada is more than a bit prohibitive, I look forward to our winters in South Texas.
We live close enough to Mexico that the avocados are reasonably priced, fresh, and don’t spoil in a day.
And … I can make guacamole… my favourite dip.
Easy Guac Recipe:
2 ripe avocados
2 TBSP Salsa
1 Small Red Onion (or 1/2 medium), chopped fine
Juice of 1 Lime
1 TBSP sour cream
Salt and Pepper, as desired
If you like it a bit more spicy, seed, finely chop, and add one small jalapeño pepper.
Mash avocados and salsa together in a medium bowl, then stir in all other ingredients until well blended. Store in tightly covered container in fridge for at least an hour (this will keep up to 1 day in fridge)
From our first taste in 2019, hubs and I became seriously attached to Blue Bell ice cream.
Made in Texas, this brand is the next best thing to home made ice cream and we love that every year, new flavours are added to the line.
3/4 Cup canned white albacore tuna mixed with a bit of chopped onion and miracle whip dressing, on top of a bed of iceberg lettuce and surrounded by home grown cherry tomatoes gifted by a friend … simple, refreshing, and nutritious, albeit a bit boring.
This simple, two-egg cheese omelette is filling and almost (1.5 grams carbs per tablespoon of chunky slasa) carb free.
One nice thing about switching to low carb for a while, is that large portions aren’t necessary to keep hunger at bay.
A burger without the bun.
Take on fork: a cherry tomato half, a bit of lettuce, a piece of air-fried burger. Dip it all into ketchup and then mustard and it’s a burger minus the carb-loaded bun (28-38 grams of carbs per bun).
This makes room for a filling lite beer (3.2 grams of carbs per can)
In my world, that’s a good trade-off.
Radically Retired 