Chopped Salad with Ginger Dressing

My mom brought home this amazing ginger dressing from the grocery store last week and we are totally hooked. We made a chopped salad with whatever we could find in the fridge and feasted. We had some Romaine lettuce, so we chopped and cleaned it early in the morning to let it crisp up before lunch time. This was a wonderful hint that I didn’t know about. When you wash and dry lettuce and leave it in the fridge for a couple hours, it will crisp up and be nice and crunchy come lunchtime.

When lunchtime rolled around, we chopped up some cold cut turkey lunch meat, Monterey Jack cheese, white onion, green onion, tomatoes and cucumbers. We also threw in a handful of sunflower nuts (sunflower seeds without the shell) for some protein and crunch, and then we drowned the salad in dressing. It was yummy.  Cheese adds calcium, protein, Vitamin A and substance to the salad. The turkey and sunflower nuts both add protein.

The best part was that it was a healthy salad. And not healthy like… eating a salad and you won’t feel quite full and you’ll be hungry in a couple hours. No! This salad has so much substance because of all the goodies we found and threw in, we were full for hours. And it was so flavorful with all the bite-sized morsels. Once we finished we felt extremely satisfied.

Some other things we’ve thrown in: chopped cilantro, spinach (extra iron and vitamins A&C), Julianne Carrots, grape tomatoes from the garden, turkey bacon bits. You can top it off with any dressing, and toss before serving. If you are going to be taking the salad to work and eating it at lunch, package the dressing separately and toss just before eating. If you leave the dressing on the greens, the salad will wilt and will not be as crunchy and satisfying. I recommend a Tupperware with some extra room so you can add dressing, replace lid, and shake!

Spam Musubi

A can of SPAM, some microwaveable rice and sheets of Nori... SPAM MUSUBI is a staple in Hawaiian snack food. In my College Graduation trip to Hawaii a few months ago, I stuffed my face with the delectable snack at every opportunity, and made sure I bought a Musubi Maker (to shape the rice into a rectangular shape) so I could enjoy them at home on the mainland. Finally, I got around to making it at home- It’s so simple!!! My family was very wary of eating it because of the stigma attached with SPAM, but they gave it a try and really enjoyed it! SPAM is actually not bad quality ham luncheon meat, contrary to the stigma attached to the name, and the product is high in protein and Vitamin C, and lower in calories than expected. It is very salty though, so I chose the “lite” option.

I used reduced sodium oyster sauce and soy sauce along with half the sugar recommended as the marinade (marinate for an hour), and actually cooked the Spam in the marinade (not in original recipe).  Then I formed the little squares of rice with the Musubi Maker and laid them on saran wrap until was ready to put them together. (I tried it with white rice and brown rice- white is traditional and stickier, but Brown is healthier because of the fiber and it’s not bleached). When it was time to assemble them, I wrapped the Nori (seaweed) around the rice and SPAM and sealed it with a drip of water. The little spam Musubi’s came out great!

Later in the week we got the MUSUBI craving again and tried making them with Teriyaki Marinade because we ran out of oyster sauce. It was just as tasty! You could tell the difference, but it wasn't very noticeable. Hint: I really like putting some of the cooked marinade on the rice before the slice of spam for extra salty/sweet delicious marinade flavor.

Ingredients:

2 cups of Instant Brown rice (Microwaveable)

1/4 c Soy Sauce

1/4 c Oyster Sauce

1/4 c Sugar

1 (12 oz) can SPAM Luncheon Meat

5 sheets of Nori

Directions:

1. Microwave the rice

2. Slice SPAM - 10 slivers

3. In a separate bowl, mix Soy Sauce, Oyster Sauce, and Sugar; marinate slices of SPAM in mixture for about an hour

4. In a skillet, heat some Veg. Oil over medium heat, and add the SPAM slices --- I always add a little of the marinade too

5. Form the little rectangles with the Musubi Maker and lay on Saran Wrap until ready to assemble.

6. Assemble: rice rectangle, SPAM Slice, and wrap with Nori

7. ENJOY!