Meatless Thursday Salads, and a hat that says "Meow"

Today was lovely and fascinating and involved lots of time with friends new and old. A few snowflakes fell, a gorgeous neighborhood cat with no collar ended up purring in my kitchen for twenty glorious minutes, my new hat for the Women's March arrived, and Tom indulged me by not complaining about the dinner I served him: two beautiful salads with nary a bit of meat in sight. 

Meow! #dontgrab #resist #pussyhat

Remind me to tell you about the new internist he recently visited who suggested my carnivore husband go vegan. Hilarious!

Anyway, these salads resulted from A) a desire to use what was in the fridge, B) my having just made the kids dinner and not wanting to commit to much more time in the kitchen, C) my mad love of veggies, and D) a realization that it's been an awfully long time since I contemplated and crafted a proper composed salad.

Result 1:

A wintry mix of celery, cucumber, blood orange, pomegranate, candied kumquats, shaved Pecorino, parsley, blackberry Balsamic, olive oil, salt and pepper. 

Result 2:

A hearty "don't let the rest of that baguette go to waste" salad of roasted golden beets, raw shallots (shaved), goat cheese, parsley, the baguette cubed and lightly fried, pimentón, and a very generous drizzle of olive oil.

Neither was difficult, both used a variety of aging ingredients and also pantry staples, and never can you underestimate the beneficence of a beautiful meal. 

Monday: manic, meatless, monsoon'y, muscular

This morning I chaperoned Ol's class field trip to a local recycling center. One of his very best buddies rode with us, and darn are those little boys precious. I find the recycling center totally cool, so you can imagine how most of the kiddos felt. A front loader here, a giant conveyor belt there. Rain be damned, the field trip was awesome. Hours later I hurried home to cook dinner for my sweet nonagenarians, then delivered it, picked Jack up, made 2+ dozen miniature collard green hand-pies and later scurried to the gym for a session with my trainer. It was awesome but for a full 45 minutes afterwards, I was on the verge of puke. Back home to prep and construct a magnificent MM (meatless Monday) dinner salad: dandelion greens slicked with an orange-pomegranate molasses-sherry vinegar dressing (because T thinks the dandelions are too bitter so to offset that, I made this sweet'ish dressing; dandelion greens are so good and so good for you; it worked); roast carrots; fresh chevre; candied walnuts; the fresh peas that I shelled yesterday; tomatoes; challah croutons; and some endive and chives. Bellissima! Perfetto!

There was a slight mishap while candying the walnuts. It seems I didn't beat the egg white until quite foamy enough and, as such, some of the nuts looked both candied and scrambled. Revolting. Those went into the trash; the fittest made it into the salad. Kitchen oops! No worries.