This week is going to be INSANE. I have a web design project with a deadline of the weekend, our anniversary dinner on Wednesday, and other plans on Friday evening AND all day Saturday (which means that I really have to have the design stuff wrapped up by Thursday night). I spent most of today working on it, and predict a few late nights this week! It’s a fun project, but I’ll be glad when the pressure of the deadline has passed.
Busy or not, though, my Meatless Monday experiment must go on! Knowing that I’d be tied up with other things today, I decided to go easy on myself and make an “everything salad” for dinner instead of trying to cook something from a new recipe.
An everything salad is just what it sounds like – a mixup of everything remotely salad-like that you happen to have on hand. In this case I had to keep it meatless, so for protein I cooked a batch of wheat berries and added a cup or so to the salad, tossed in some sunflower seeds, and grated some Grana Padano to sprinkle on top.
(P.S. – To make wheat berries, just bring three cups of water to a boil, add one cup of wheat berries, reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for two hours. Easy peasy!)
Apart from the protein sources, today’s salad was a mix of romaine lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, cucumber, orange pepper, green onion, fresh mushrooms, roasted red pepper, artichoke hearts, and Sicilian spiced green olives, dressed with balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil.
When dinner was prepared I realized that with all the chopping it probably ended up taking just as much time to make the salad as if I’d cooked something – but making a salad didn’t require learning anything new, so I think it was a wise choice for today. My taxed brain appreciated it… and besides, it was delicious!
Are you participating in Meatless Monday?
What did you make for dinner tonight?
