Taco Salad

Ever wonder what to serve when your guests have a lot of different dietary requirements? 

No meat. No carbs. High carbs. High raw. Hearty and high calorie.

Taco Salad is a good thing to have when you're feeding a variety of eaters, everyone can build their own salad or tacos with whatever their food requirements are. You can make it fancy or simple with whatever you like.

Ingredients:

romaine and red leaf lettuce, chopped
pico de gallo--sweet & green onions, cilantro, tomatoes, jalapeno pepper & lemon--chop & mix
red and green cabbage, thinly sliced
avocado, sliced
spanish rice
ground turkey--seasoned with cumin, chili powder, oregano, garlic powder, salt & pepper
pinto or black beans

optional: olives, sour cream cheese, slivered almonds, corn, chile verde, grilled salmon, tortillas

 The avocados on our trees are just beginning to mature--this is the first one of the year--not much mature flavor yet, but after several months without them, they're so good!

 

Soon, there will be enough avocados to make guacamole!

 

 Canned olives and pinto beans--black beans are good in Taco Salad too--you can make your own beans to control the salt.

If I'm having a lot of people over, I might make Chile Verde too.

 

Or maybe some carne asada.

 

 Or grill some salmon--did you see the Fish Tacos post?

Taco Salad is a favorite at our house--letting everyone build their own salad allows for a diverse range of eaters satisfying their needs. On the top of my salad, I sprinkled a little bit of arugula I've got growing in-between the flowers in my front yard.

Itadakimasu!


***


Baseball season has begun!

 My nephew Colin is playing for Loyola Marymount University.
You might remember Colin made Meatball Sandwiches here on FOODjimoto.com.

 I like watching baseball when I know someone playing--and especially when it's Colin.

 Rick's a baseball fan. BIG baseball fan.

 

Proud Mom, Nancy.

 

Proud Pop, Bill.

 

Bachan came to the game, too.

O-Baachan and O-Jiichan both came to the game as well as Mr. & Mrs. Iriyama, their close friends. It's quite an outing to have the whole gang come out to support Colin.
Thanks, Nancy & Bill for lunch and taking care of us at the game--we had fun!


***

Taco Salad

Ingredients:

romaine and red leaf lettuce, chopped
pico de gallo--sweet & green onions, cilantro, tomatoes, jalapeno pepper & lemon--chop & mix
red and green cabbage, thinly sliced
avocado, sliced, diced or made into guacamole
spanish rice
ground turkey--seasoned with cumin, chili powder, oregano, garlic powder, salt & pepper
pinto or black beans

optional: olives, sour cream cheese, slivered almonds, corn, chile verde, grilled salmon, tortillas

Prepare each ingredient and place into separate bowls so everyone can build their own salad according to their own dietary requirements.

Cool & Minty Summer Salad with Peaches

My friend Pam gave me the recipe for this salad.

She got it from the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, a local newspaper, from a column written by Dorothy Reinhold, who cites the recipe as adapted from Cooking Light.

I remember when Pam made this salad for one of the Godinez get-togethers--I thought it was the best thing I'd eaten in awhile, it was so fresh-tasting and very different from what I usually make.

The recipe calls for 2 cups cooked chicken, if you've got a vegetarian or two in your family, it's easy to mix up the salad and put the chicken on top.

Make it like this for your vegetarians, or as a side salad.

Add some barbecued chicken in citrus marinade for your omnivores.

Ingredients:

Dressing:

1 cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Salad:

1 cup chopped cucumber

1/3 cup chopped pecans, toasted

2 tablespoons minced red onion

3 peaches, chopped, peeled and pitted

1 cup day-old brown rice

1 cup leftover cooked green beans

red leaf lettuce

Do you have mint growing in your yard?

It's easy to grow, but tends to spread out, so best plant it in a pot or confined space.

Put the sugar and mint in a food processor or mini blender.

The instructions say to process the sugar and mint first, until the mint is finely chopped, but I think it would work just as well to blend everything together at once.

The sugar and mint didn't do that well in the mini blender, but was fine when I added all the dressing ingredients.

Add the white wine vinegar,

Fresh lemon juice,

Salt, and several grinds of the peppermill.

Blend until the mint is finely chopped.

Slice the cucumber and onions.

I thought I had a red onion but didn't, so I used green onion.

Add one cup cooked brown rice.

I used the Brown Rice Medley from Trader Joe's.

It's one of my favorites.

Add the green beans.

And the peaches.

Just like the peaches I used in Berry Best Won Ton Napoleons, add a little bit of lemon juice to keep white peaches from turning brown.

Toss all the ingredients.

But don't forget to add the pecans like I did.

They're good.

Especially if you use the Sweet & Spicy Pecans from Trader Joe's.

Serve over red leaf lettuce.

With or without the sliced chicken, the salad is delicious!

Itadakimasu!

***

My sister and her daughters are visiting from Hawaii!

Yay!

They're here for a wedding.

I'm still editing the photos, so more about the wedding on a later post.

While my sister met one of her childhood friends for lunch downtown, Paige, Hannah and I had lunch together and did some shopping in Little Tokyo.

They're fun.

We ate shabu shabu.

It didn't matter that it was a hot day, we still wanted shabu shabu.

We ate at Shabu Shabuyo on 2nd Street in LA's Little Tokyo.

You can read about our homestyle shabu shabu blog post here.

Paige got kuro buta, it looked really good.

You'll have to trust me--I didn't get a photo of the kuro buta plate.

Hannah and I got the vegetarian plate.

When my sister asked Paige if she's going to cry at the wedding, Paige said,

"I hope so."

I loved that.

It's going to be another "Paige-ism" that I'll mention at every wedding.

We went to Shabu Shabuyo because The Shabu Shabu House was closed.

I liked it, I thought it was good.

The kuro buta looked melt-in-your-mouth delicious.

She's dipping it in ponzu sauce.

The vegetarian selection had enoki mushrooms, brown mushrooms, broccoli, nappa, tofu slices, carrots, onions, baby bok choy leaves and udon noodles.

It was too much to eat.

Hannah hasn't eaten any meat in a year-and-a-half.

She's super-committed.

My choice on Friday was to cook and post something, or spend the time with my nieces.

Since I don't get to see them often enough, I made the right choice.

Love you, Paige!

Love you, Hannah!


***

Ingredients:

Dressing:

1 cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Salad:

1 cup chopped cucumber

1/3 cup chopped pecans, toasted

2 tablespoons minced red onion

3 peaches, chopped, peeled and pitted

1 cup day-old brown rice

1 cup leftover cooked green beans

red leaf lettuce

Make the dressing by blending the dressing ingredients in a blender or food processor.

Combine salad ingredients in a large bowl (don't forget the pecans!), drizzle dressing to taste over salad, toss well to coat.

Serve on top of red leaf lettuce leaves (whole or torn). Add cooked, sliced chicken as desired.