Mushroom Bacon? For Real?

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Cheer up, Old Bean!

Thank you for making the switch!!

my Cafe salad, yum!!

I have two favorite salads from two different but equally expensive restaurants in the county (one in SLO and one in Paso). I decided to combine my favorite elements from each and create my very own cafe salad. So here's my fusion salad:

My maple candied Walnut, Apple, Apricot salad.

(super easy!!)

First you need to make your own candied walnuts. You can make them however you prefer but I wanted a recipe that didn't contain either refined sugars or eggs. I found a recipe which I modified to my tastes and to fit the restaurants recipe. The expensive restaurant salad has pepper on their candied walnuts and it's a really nice touch.

Maple Candied Walnuts:

2 cups raw walnut halves

3 tablespoons grade B organic maple syrup

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil (my fav is Pasolivo)

(optional ingredients: cinnamon or pepper. also

optional: a pinch of sea salt)

preheat oven to 400 degrees. mix all ingredients into a glass baking dish. Coat the walnuts completely and bake for 12-14 mins, check often to make sure they don't burn. When done immediately transfer to a plate to cool. yum, they're sooooo good!!

Now for the salad itself.

My version of the two salads

contains:

1/2 a granny smith green apple, sliced

3 organic dried apricots, diced

handful of the candied walnuts

spinach

arugula (adds a delicious peppery taste)

honey mustard vinagrette

(instead of making my own from scratch I use the Annie's Organics Lite Honey Mustard Vinagrette)

And the finished product- soooo good and tastes really similar to the restaurant salads I was trying to recreate- not quite as sweet but so delicious!!!

Vive La Salade- Part Deux! aka The Goods....

So let's talk about this beautiful, amazing salad from the previous post! This pic was before it was tossed so you can only see the avocado and pine nuts but there is, oh- so- much more in there!!!

Basically it's an organic spring mix topped with some of the most flavorful vegetable goodness! Obviously everyone's taste buds are different so some of the ingredients might not be your idea of heaven, but my husband and I are currently obsessed with it and have had this exact meal 3 nights in a row!

After finishing Alicia Silverstone's book, The Kind Diet, I was inspired to walk the produce section of the market and grab for things I would normally walk right passed. This would basically be the radish/root vegetable section. I decided it was time to add some daikon to my life. Daikon is a natural diuretic and cuts through fat, it has a mild flavor and looks like a giant white carrot (it should be VERY firm, so you know it's fresh).

So along with the daikon here's what also lies lurking beneath those avos.....

thinly sliced green bell peppers (vitamin C, folic acid, Vitamin B6, anti-oxidant)

shredded carrot (we all know the benefits of this veggie- beta carotene and others....)

shredded red radish (which has a whole slew of medicinal properties!! very detoxifying.)

the above mentioned daikon- shredded

sliced cucumbers (anti-inflammatory, vitamin C and fiber in the skin)

kidney beans (fiber, iron, protein)

garbanzo beans (fiber, iron, protein)

avocado (the list of benefits is so long, I'm just too lazy to type them all- but anti- aging is a good one!!!)

toasted pine nuts (protein, fiber, appetite suppressant!!!! and quite a few more benefits!)

I also added some left over cold brown rice one night and my husband adds tomatoes to his. I like to top my salad with Annie's Organic "Goddess" dressing. My husband eats his without dressing, but sometimes sneaks a bit of Annie's too. :)

Let me go on a tangent for a moment about pine nuts. I never really thought much of the little pine nut, sure I'd had them on greek salads, but I never really remembered their flavor. I had an amazingly simple salad from a restaurant the other day which included pine nuts. I was inspired to do this myself and went in search of organic raw pine nuts that I could toast myself. I had some sticker shock (a pound of raw organic pine nuts from the bulk section of my local health food store is $29.99!!!!!!!!). I got a handful, hoping I wasn't breaking the bank and decided I would savour each and every nut! I'm like the pine nut nazi around my house! I make sure not to lose any from the pan (after being toasted) and I make sure each one is consumed- I don't want to waste a single penny!!!! I needn't have been concerned about that, each and every one of those guys is consumed- they are so good!!! They have a nutty, buttery flavor which tastes so heavenly with avocado, which then makes the whole salad taste amazing- it must be experienced to really know what I'm talking about!! I am a pine nut convert (but will have to limit their use as 1. they're beaucoup expensive and 2. they're kinda high in fat for such a little thing!!! even thought it's beneficial fat)

Hopefully this inspires some of you to make your own "bowl of heaven"...