Sunday Brunch - Salad as a Meal #giveaway

 

TINA KASHIAN: Welcome to our Sunday Brunch! This is my first time hosting a Sunday Brunch and I’m excited to pick a topic to chat with our wonderful readers. During the summer we eat different types of salads, and they are often the main course about two times a week. I love Mediterranean and Middle Eastern salads like tabouleh, chickpea salad, cold couscous salad with kalamata olives, and fattoush, a Lebanese salad with pita chips that serve as croutons. We use vegetables from our garden and wait for our tomatoes to ripen, our cucumbers to grow, and our herbs such as mint and parsley to be ready. Many of these salads use lemon juice and olive oil as a dressing instead of mayonnaise and are healthy.

So, today’s Sunday Brunch questions are: How often do you eat salad as a meal? And what is your favorite type of salad? Please share because there will be a book giveaway you don’t want to miss! (Please leave your email address for a chance to win.)

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MADDIE: I love salad as a meal. I posted the recipe for a simple version the day after Thanksgiving last year. At this time of year, I often make my favorite Greek salad, also simple, featuring homegrown gold cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and oregano, plus feta cheese, Kalamata olives, and olive oil. 

Add a crusty baguette to soak up the oil and juices and you have dinner! 

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VICKI: I enjoy a chicken salad all year round.  Nothing could be easier.  Grill a chicken breast and then slice it and add to lettuces,. tomatoes, maybe some cucumber or zucchini.  i like sunflower seeds and dried cranberries for crunch, and a sturdy homemade dressing. 

When fresh tomatoes are at the farm stand, I love to do an Italian bread salad. I shared my favourite way of preoparing it on the blog a while ago.  Mystery Lovers' Kitchen: Bread salad (mysteryloverskitchen.com)

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MIA: I'll have to admit to not being a huge salad as a meal fan. It's fine as an accompaniment, but it often leaves me feeling unsatisfied. I'm a big fan of caprese, chickpea, and other Mediterranean-style salads, like the ones Tina mentioned, but the one I was absolutely obsessed with last year was Mary Anne Mohanraj's kale sambol. If you had told me pre-pandemic that I would be making kale salad every single week throughout the summer, I wouldn't have believed you. But there's something so addictive about the combination of finely shredded kale, cherry tomatoes, onion, coconut, lime, and sugar. Just make sure to have a nice curry or chunk of protein on the side.

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LESLIE KARST: My mother was famous for her massive bowls of salad for dinner, with the rule being, “No one leaves the table until the salad’s all gone.” So I admit to being a bit of a salad freak, and Robin and I have it as the main course of our dinner at least once a week. One of my favorites is Salade Lyonnaise, which is frisée lettuce, bacon, poached eggs, and a red wine vinagrette. But sometimes it’s lettuce with whatever leftovers happen to be in the fridge, such as this one with the previous night’s roasted veggies, along with bleu cheese, croutons, and a simple vinaigrette.

Or this one with baby spinach, avocado, orange, and pickled onion.

And to round out our salad dinner, we most always accompany it with crunchy French bread and butter—which may be the best part of the meal!

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MAYA: I enjoy Salade Nicoise, named for the French Riviera city of Nice. The salad features ingredients associated with Mediterranean diets, though not all of these will be in every salad: tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, olives, tuna or anchovies, green beans, potatoes, peppers, cucumbers, leaf lettuce. I use whatever I have on hand with a vinaigrette dressing and crusty bread.

I recently shared a recipe for the Mediterranean tuna salad that appears in both photos. 

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LUCY BURDETTE: Hmmm, these all look so good! Makes me think we should do this more often. And I do make the wonderful Italian bread salad when our garden is full of tomatoes and cukes. And here's a watermelon, cuke and feta salad that's wonderful--though I don't think my hub would consider this dinner!

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MOLLY MACRAE: Oh salad, how do we love you? Let me count the ways. 

With beans and rice, oh so nice, 

Sweet potato,

Fresh tomato,

With cheese? Yes, please!

Fruit salad or salad roasted, 

Add some nuts lightly toasted,

Crisp, delicious and all green,

Salad, salad, you are Queen. 

We eat salad for supper at least twice a week throughout the year. I have so many pictures of salads, it was hard to choose one. But here's roasted beet and radish salad with sunflower seeds and fresh orange on a bed of mixed greens and fresh dill - mmm mm!

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LESLIE BUDEWITZ:  We, too, are huge fans of meal salads, as well as green salads on the side. Not big on fruit salad--and I certainly don't consider it dessert! (The only time we insist on a fruit salad is for our annual holiday brunch, when a good friend brings a huge bowl of the stuff with a honey-based dressing and it's delicious, partly because we rarely eat it any other time!) Having a big bowl of salad, whether it's a green salad or something more substantial, in the fridge, gives me a very satisfying feeling of abundance. To be a meal salad, though, it really ought to include some kind of protein, whether it's chicken, shrimp, cheese, or as in this Herbed Black Bean Pasta Salad, a combo of black beans and carbs. It originally appeared in Killing Thyme, my third Seattle Spice Shop mystery, and more than one reader told me they loved how Pepper used the salad to catch a killer! Happily, you don't have to be setting a trip or stalking a killer to enjoy it. Hmm, maybe we'll enjoy a big bowl of it this weekend.  

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MARY JANE MAFFINI  I always enjoy the talk around the table at Sunday Brunch!  Thanks for a fun topic, Tina.  I must confess that I have never been a been lover of main dish salads, although we almost always have salad as a side.  My hubby is the king of all things salad-y, so it depends on who is making the meal whether it’s the main.  Having said that, we are dealing with July heat and humidity and there’s a bumper crop of delicious local strawberries. Fired up by my Mystery Lovers Kitchen colleagues talk of their fantastic salads and fed up with the steamy weather, it made sense to give a strawberry chicken salad a try.  The refreshing result was unsurprisingly a hit with the little mister but I loved it too. Who knew? Maybe because the strawberries were sweet and they played well with tart blueberries, salty feta, herbs and chicken breasts in savory dressing.   

I liked it so much I agreed to try it as soon as we get back to the strawberry stand and to pass on the recipe in a Mystery Lovers Kitchen post.  

I look forward to seeing what you readers think of salad meals and what ideas you’ll bring to our table. Molly, I loved the poem!

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CLEO COYLE: Timely topic for summer, Tina! All the salads mentioned look delicious, and I know I'd enjoy every one. I'll just add a salad that Marc and I always enjoy: potato salad! We often make it the traditional way with mayo. Today, I'll share our potato salad recipe with a hot-bacon twist, which can be a meal in itself. The original recipe was inspired by Marc's grandmother, Ethel. We even featured it in our 17th Coffeehouse Mystery SHOT IN THE DARK. If you'd like the recipe, CLICK HERE or click on the photo below. And eat with summertime joy, everyone! ~ Cleo 

Click for Cleo's recipe.

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How often do you eat salad as a meal?

And what is your favorite type of salad?

GIVEAWAY! 

To be entered in this week's drawing,

join us in the comments.

How often do you eat salad as a meal?
And what is your favorite type of salad? 

Include your email address,

so we can contact the winner!

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Wednesday, July 21

> MURDER AT THE LOBSTAH SHACK (ARC)

by Maddie Day

> ONE FETA IN THE GRAVE

by Tina Kashian

> A MEASURE OF MURDER

by Leslie Karst

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