My version of a kick ass salad.

I hate the salads in the UK.  A few pieces of limp lettuce, a bit of cucumber and tomato. No dressing. Can you say boring. I have gone salad mad. I can not get enough. Fruit or veg. Its Spring. Bring it on. So here is what I do for a real kick ass salad. A meal. I love it.

Take your lettuce, what ever kind you like. Even try mixing some different kinds. I love adding spinach. Wash it and spin it in a salad spinner. I found my salad spinner at Aldi for like £3. It dries of the lettuce and you can just put it on a zip lock bag and it last for a few days.

On a big plate or a large bowl take a good handful of the lettuce. Add to it and or all of the following

Chopped red pepper, tomato, cucumber, chopped celery, carrot (take your peeler and make strips) apple chunks, pear chunks, avocado, feta cheese, linseed, cashew, almonds or walnuts.  Feel free to also add chicken chunks, or tuna, or bacon if you like.  Add anything you like. That is the beauty of it

Then dress it. I do it really simple. Drizzel olive oil and medina balsamic vinegar.  You can do olive oil and lemon too. Or take some Mayo or olive oil, add some French brown mustard, white wine vinegar and honey.

Enjoy.

Bean soup

I threw this together tonight and it turned out really good. Should be pretty good for us too. This is what I used, but use what you have in stock.

I used can beans except for the lentils. We soaked the lentils over night. I think doing this again I would pre-cook the lentils a bit as they still seemed a bit tough. If you want to use dry beans make sure you soak them over night. Don’t forget to check for stones as sometimes dry beans have little stones in the bag. Can beans are fine really. You can get them pretty cheap too.

I finely chopped 1 onion, 1 yellow bell pepper, and several stocks of celery. I would of added Carrots but they where past their sell by date for sure. I then sweated them in olive oil for a good 10 mins. Make sure that they are sweated down.

To the sweating veg I added the spices. I used about a tablespoon of dried parsley,  a tablespoon or a bit more of dried Thyme, and about a 1/4 tsp or so of ground coriander seed and about 1 tsp of salt. I always try and add the spice to the oil. Its seems to make the oil infused and the whole thing comes out better.

I then added the beans.

The pre-soaked lentils ( 1 quarter of a small bag. It really makes a lot) 2 cans of Cannelloni beans, a can of red kidney beans, a small can of mixed beans. Really you can use any beans you like. I love the cannelloni beans and I love butter beans. They are white and light in flavour.

I poured a pre-boiled kettle of water over the beans and added about 4 or 5 vegetable oxo cubes. I covered the beans but didn’t add a ton of water above the bean line.

I boiled it for about 40 mins. It turned out really tasty.  The beans seem to naturally thicken the stock. Just make sure that you stir it so nothing sticks or burns to the bottom of the pan.