Recipe of the Day: Peanut Thai Noodle Salad

Love It: Even avowed peanut butter haters enjoy sesame noodles. This recipe grinds its own, making a sweet-tangy sauce with nutty richness.

Fear It: Peanuts do have lots of fat, but it’s generally the healthy kind, so you only need to worry here if you have a peanut allergy.

Teach It: In a pan-saving technique, the recipe calls for throwing the veggies into the pasta pot during the last bit of cooking. Excellent! A fast and simple way to take a little crunch off and make the nutrients more available.

Eat It: While the recipe calls for eating the dish right away, while it’s still warm, these sort of nutty noodles are also great cold. They make a great lunch at work or school.

Peanut Thai Noodle Salad
Source: Kraft Foods
Yield: 1 serving

• 1 Tbsp. lime juice
  
• 2 teaspoons low sodium soy sauce
  
• 2 teaspoons honey
  
• 2 Tbsp. PLANTERS Dry Roasted Unsalted Peanuts, divided
  
• 2 ounces rotini pasta, uncooked
  
• 4 baby carrots, cut into thin strips
  
• ¼ cup snow pea pods, cut into thin strips
  
• ½ medium red pepper, cut into thin strips
  

PLACE lime juice, soy sauce, honey and 1 Tbsp. of the peanuts in a blender or food processor; cover. Blend until smooth; set aside.
COOK pasta as directed on package, adding carrots, pea pods and peppers to boiling water during the last 3 min. of cooking time. Drain pasta and vegetables in a colander; transfer to a serving bowl. Combine pasta and vegetables with peanut sauce and remaining peanuts.
ENJOY grapes for dessert.
SERVE a glass of water with the meal.

Nutritional notes:
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories 440
Total fat 11g
Saturated fat 1.5g
Cholesterol 0mg
Sodium 400mg
Carbohydrate 78g
Dietary fiber 7g
Sugars 29g
Protein 15g
Vitamin A 150%DV
Vitamin C 250%DV
Calcium 6%DV
Iron 25%DV

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Tip File: Salads as Nutritional Spackle

I read so much about wonderful, highly nutritious foods we should all be eating every day. A half cup of beans, a bowl of oatmeal, a handful of nuts — in fact, it often seems nuts how much food we’re expected to consume daily and yet still keep the calorie count low.

 

With so many obligation foods out there, where do I fit in my pizza and grilled cheese?

 

Aside from wanting to satisfy my cravings for what’s bad for me, there is the problem of just where to fit in all those magical foods that will make us so much healthier. I can’t serve dark, leafy greens as the main course every night.

 

That’s where some sneakiness needs to come in, I think. I know parents have a tendency to disguise good-for-us vegetables under blankets of cheese or grated to oblivion in sauce, but that’s a topic for another time.

 

What I’m thinking of is tricking our adult selves into consuming more of the nutritious foods that are often missing in our diets without shunting aside our favorite main courses.

 

My top method for accomplishing this is incorporating the foods into side salads.

 

Maybe you didn’t grow up with a salad as a side dish every day, but my mom started providing salad at nearly every evening meal about the time those bagged mixes started showing up in the produce department in our hometown. It took me a while to overcome my aversion to lettuce as a child, but my tastebuds have most definitely grown out of it. I’ve now become accustomed to having a salad to accompany my dinner most nights, and I consider it a sign of a good-value restaurant if they throw me one before my entrée arrives.

 

Here in Slovakia, I continued the tradition, generally tossing some lettuce with tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions, maybe some radishes if I felt ambitious. I got a bagged salad mix with iceberg lettuce, grated carrots, and shredded cabbage.

 

But lately, I’ve been taking advantage of that daily salad to sneak in some extra nutrition in something I’m going to be eating anyway.

 

Now, due to nutritional issues, cost, and the fact that my bagged mixes here were going bad within a day or two, I make all our salads with that dark green, romaine lettuce. If you’re in the United States, you can up the dark-greens content of your salad by tossing in some baby spinach as well.

 

Also, I started adding drained and rinsed canned beans to our salads every night. This adds protein and fiber to our diets, two things I noticed we were generally lacking in. Plus, the fiber in beans can help reduce cholesterol levels over time.

 

Another trick I’ve read about is to add a small portion of nuts to your salad each night. This strategy could replace the crunch I’ve missed since giving up croutons (sniff!), along with providing nuts’ vitamins, minerals, and good fats in doses smaller than you’d be tempted to consume when snacking.

 

Or at least what I’d be tempted to consume should someone place a bowl of roasted, salted almonds in front of me.

 

Salads can also accommodate fruit, but if you go this route, stick to fresh fruits such as diced apples, orange wedges, and strawberries (tasty with balsamic vinegar!). Dried fruits often have added sugar and, if nothing else, provide more calories than fresh fruit per given volume since all the bulk-adding water’s been sucked out.

 

Of course, it’s important to mix in your garden-variety salad vegetables as well. Tomatoes and carrots (I now keep a bag of the pre-shredded sort on hand) are nutritional powerhouses themselves. Cucumbers help make you feel full because of their high water content, leading you to consume less of a perhaps naughtier main dish.

 

Salads aren’t the only solution. At some point, I’ve got to add an entry here about using desserts to fill nutritional holes in your diet. Pizzas, sandwiches, and other less than healthy foods as well. But salads, if you generally eat them with your dinner, are an easy start.

 

Now that you’ve packed your salad bowl with all this good stuff, there’s no need to ruin it by drowning it in ranch dressing (I know what you like, America). Stick to the light versions of bottled dressing, switch to Salad Spritzers, drizzle on straight balsamic vinegar, or try some homemade dressing. Below is a recipe for a delicious sweet and spicy dressing Scott and I came up with while trying to duplicate Catalina for his mom’s taco salad.

 

Fat-Free Taco Salad Dressing
Source: Colleen Fischer (with inspiration from a number of Catalina dressing recipes online)
Yield: 13 two-tablespoon servings

 

• ½ cup vinegar
• ½ cup ketchup
• 1 tablespoon taco seasoning
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon pepper
• 1 onion, grated

 

Whisk all ingredients together in a small bowl or mix in a blender. Serve or store in a dressing cruet.

 

NUTRITION FACTS
Servings: 13
Amount Per Serving
Calories: 18
Total Fat: 0.11g
Cholesterol: –
Sodium: 198mg
Total Carbs: 4.22g
Dietary Fiber: –
Protein: 0.29g

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Brown Mustard Potato Salad

I, like many, am a potato addict. Something about the mealy texture and starchiness make this vegetable feel satisfying on a level achieved by only beans in plant world (at least to me).

 

I, like many, tend to get my potato fix from French fries. In fact, French fries are likely the number one vegetable dish in most kids’ diets. (If you don’t think so, try visiting the local public school cafeteria sometime. Only if you consider pancake syrup a vegetable would fries be trumped.)

 

I, like many, think I should probably eat less fried foods. No matter what your position is on fat, no one can contest that foods cooked in fat have more calories than foods cooked in water. And as you might have guessed from my review of the CalorieKing software, I’m trying to cut back on calories.

 

You know, potatoes don’t often catch a break in the calorie department, though. If they’re not fried up into hash browns or home fries, they’re drenched in mayo (potato salad) or butter and cream (mashed and baked potatoes).

 

Potatoes can be part of a healthy diet, despite their starchiness. They get a bad rap from their fatty friends, that’s all. A baked potato, on its own, has fewer calories than weight grams (93 calories per 100 grams), making it a food you can enjoy with only a modicum of moderation.

 

A baked potato with salt and maybe 10 spritzes of the lovely I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray was a meal I could eat while trying desperately to drop pounds pre-wedding and still feel full. All for 169 calories!

 

However, this is an entry on potato salad, not baked potatoes.

 

How do we trim down the calorie count for potato salad?

 

First, swap out the mayonnaise. Replace some of it with reduced-fat or light mayo, and replace the rest with spicy brown mustard. This salad is so highly seasoned because of the mustard that you’re not likely to notice any difference in the taste of the mayo, even if you’re the picky sort who always goes for the full-fat kind. As for the mustard, it has way fewer calories than any mayo.

 

Second, bulk up the salad with low-cal vegetables. I did just argue that potatoes are not high-cal on their own, but they certainly don’t hold a candle to celery in the rock-bottom stats department. There’s even that rumor that celery takes more calories to digest than you ingest from the veggie. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that five medium stalks have only 28 calories total.

 

Third, garnish with more high-flavor, low-calorie items. Pickles have a yummy sour, salty zing, and if you stick with the dill variety rather than the sweet, they won’t cost you many calories. Seasonings like dill and garlic powder also help punch up the flavor so you don’t miss the fat.

 

Finally, sneak in extra flavor where you can. Potatoes can be a bit bland on their own. Sprinkling the hot tots with some sweet vinegar helps enhance their taste even without our spicy sauce. You could use balsamic vinegar instead of apple cider vinegar for a sweeter taste, but it might turn the potatoes a slightly unappetizing color. Still, it’s a thought worthy of future experimentation.

 

Now, the stats:

 

You can have one cup of regular homemade potato salad for 358 calories.

 

You can eat the entire four-medium-potato recipe of my Brown Mustard Potato salad for 589 calories. Since you wouldn’t do that, know that one serving registers a mere 147 calories. That’s a savings of . . .

 

211 calories per serving! And you get more than one cup per serving in my recipe, too.

 

Brown Mustard Potato Salad
Source: Colleen Fischer
Yield: 4 servings

• 4 medium all-purpose potatoes, diced
  
• 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
  
• 4 stalks celery, sliced thin
  
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
  
• ¼ cup sour pickle slices, diced
  
• ½ teaspoon dried dill
  
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  
• ½ teaspoon paprika
  
• ½ cup brown mustard
  
• ½ cup light mayonnaise
  
• salt
  
• pepper
  

Place the potatoes in a pot of salted water and bring to a boil. Cook for about 10 minutes or until fork-tender. Drain the potatoes and then place them on a baking sheet. Drizzle the three tablespoons (or enough to coat) of vinegar on the potatoes and toss them to evenly distribute the acid. Spread the potatoes out to cool.

Meanwhile, chop up the other vegetables and place them in a mixing bowl. Add the dill, garlic powder, and paprika. Stir. Add the potatoes when they are cooled and mix again to distribute the seasonings.

Add the mustard and mayonnaise to the bowl. Mix thoroughly. Taste, add salt and pepper as necessary, and mix again. Serve.

Notes:

If you happen to get slightly larger potatoes than I had and need more sauce, add mustard and mayo in equal proportions, about a tablespoon each at a time, until the consistency is right. But don’t start adding more until you’ve thoroughly mixed the salad, as it will look kind of dry at first. Keep stirring until the sauce is evenly distributed before adding more so that you don’t end up with a drowned salad.

If you take the salad to a picnic, remember to keep it on ice as the starchy pototoes are bound to get germ-friendly if they’re out in the sun too long.

Nutritional notes:
per serving:
147 calories
4 g fat
3 g protein
20 g carbohydrates
3 g fiber

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Punchy Purple Chicken Salad

Note: This recipe was originally published on my old blog on June 12, 2005. Now some 20/20 hindsight — to poach chicken breast, place it in simmering broth (with an inch of cover) for nine minutes, then cover, turn off the heat, and let it rest in the hot broth for about 20 minutes, until it’s cooked through.

 

The red onion provides both the purple and the punch in this salad, which you might want to tone down with some lettuce, tomato and cheese on your sandwich. If you don’t like a strong onion flavor, try soaking the diced onion in cold water for about 10 minutes to make it milder (a tip often given by the Food Network’s Sara Moulton).

 

Another suggestion: This recipe (like any chicken salad recipe) would work well with leftover chicken or with chicken pulled from a rotisserie-cooked bird. Whatever you choose, be careful not to overcook the chicken like I did! I need a little more poaching practice, it seems.

 

 

Punchy Purple Chicken Salad
Source: Colleen Fischer
Yield: enough for two small or one big sandwich

 

• 1 cooked boneless, skinless chicken breast half, cubed
• 1/2 medium red onion, diced
• 2 tbsp mayonnaise
• 1/8 tsp celery salt
• freshly ground black pepper

 

Stir together all the ingredients. Allow it to rest in the refrigerator for a half hour or more for the flavors to blend.

 

 

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Pickled Salad

Dinner here almost always requires a salad. I cook almost every evening, and I suppose my creativity is not always rainbows and milky ways, so it’s generally bowls of bagged lettuce along with whatever’s still around (tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, radishes, etc.) and my mustard vinaigrette that grace our table.

A lettuce shortage in the apartment? Time to try something different (um, finally)!

Right now, dill is my new favorite flavor to experiment with. Of course, it’s a natural fit with cucumber pickles.

By the way, have you ever had fresh refrigerator pickles? A-maz-ing.

I took the idea of refrigerator pickles and mashed it up with cucumber-tomato-onion salad. Letting it sit a while turned it into a dish with that sort of lip-smacking sourness.

Pickles. Yum.

Pickled Salad
Source: Colleen Fischer
Yield: 2 servings

• 1 seedless cucumber
• 1 globe tomato
• ½ medium onion
• ½ teaspoon dill
• salt
• pepper
• 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 2 teaspoons olive oil

Slice the cucumber in half lengthwise, then halve each half lengthwise. Cut the quarters into a chunky dice. Add to bowl. Core and dice the tomato, and then add to the bowl with the cucumbers. Divide the onion piece in half lengthwise. Slice it widthwise into small quarter-moons. Add to the mix.

Sprinkle the vegetables with dill and add salt and pepper to taste. Add vinegar and toss to distribute the vinegar and seasonings throughout the vegetables. Add the oil and toss again.

Allow the salad to sit for at least half an hour so the vinegar can penetrate the vegetables. Serve.

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