After seeing me take an hour to make a salad for the Offbeat Home Cooking Challenge, my friend Lana sent me this email and recipe for a “bricolage salad.”
Megan, no salad should take an hour! Dude, this is THE BEST FUCKING SALAD ever, that we basically live off of every single day — sometimes three times a day: Bricolage salad!
I’m going to tell you what we do to make it, because it only takes 10 minutes.
Buy a big-ass container of spring green mix and buy some of those Always Fresh Containers. Those green containers will make your lettuce last like all freaking week.
Take a few handfuls of lettuce (or however much you think you’re gonna want) and put it in a salad spinner. (Totally fucking necessary.)
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Rinse that shit and spin. Drain water.
Cut up whatever else you have around. I like maybe a celery stalk, orange bell pepper, cut some cherry tomatoes in half, throw in some blueberries. I like that sprouted tofu, if you’re gonna eat tofu, because I think soy is bad unless it’s sprouted.
Throw a handful of pre-sliced almonds on top, add some salt, pepper, and drizzle some olive oil on top, and squeeze a bit of lemon or lime for added flavor if you want.
My husband likes to put a few strawberries in his salad, too.
DONE. BOOM. Ten fuckin’ minutes, super healthy.
I mean, there’s no recipe or rules, it’s just throw whatever you’ve got in! It changes every time, that’s the beauty. It’s really just whatever you’ve got at home that is fresh and would be yummy! There is no right or wrong — unless your salad mix goes bad, then that’s wrong.
Extra notes
If you basically live off produce, like we do, those stupid little fake apple balls to keep things fresh really work!
FYI, you have to store the extra tofu in Tupperware submerged in water or it’ll go bad faster.
Oh, you can use flax oil too as the dressing, which is really good for you. This is the one we like with the high lignans.
And you can sprinkle some of this on top, but taste it first because it’s an acquired taste: nutritional yeast.
Making food with no rules is the best! Recipes totally screw me up and take too long. The best part about this salad is, the only thing you have to wash is the plate and fork — everything else just gets a quick rinse.
Yes! And you don’t even need lettuce if you don’t have any, just chop a bunch of stuff up and throw it in a bowl. Olive oil, salt, and pepper are delicious on their own as dressing, it’s my current go-to (I even have a bottle in my office right now…).
Agreed, I love the idea of lettuce being optional. My work has a ginormous salad bar, but I used to avoid it because I didn’t care for lettuce. Not anymore! I load a big bowl full of veggies, beans, tofu (actually very similar ingredients as the author recommends) and slather it with olive oil and add-ins like almonds and feta. YUM!
I don’t have any particular opinions on soy being bad for me, so I just use shelled edamame (soy beans) for some protein instead of tofu. Also I mainly just like the way it tastes.
I’ve also seen people use a scoop of hummus as salad dressing.
I’ve never thought of putting nutritional yeast on salads (only popcorn!) so I am excited for that suggestion.
I love nutritional yeast, but also have never thought of putting that on a salad, I will be trying that 🙂 And how awesome are salad spinners?! Totally changed my salads, not even joking, no more watery dressing, bleugh.
After sending me this email, my buddy bought me a salad spinner. It’s AWESOME!!!
Don’t know if it’s just older articles since it doesn’t happen for me on today’s article, but for this one I get a giant pop-up ad that scrolls with me 🙁 I hope that’s not intentional. I know that ad revenue is a necessity, but this intrusive style really makes me want to just close the page. I have a screenshot if anyone would like it.
We’ve recently made the decision to allow surveys and more invasive banner advertising to appear on Offbeat Home & Life. We know it can be bothersome, but we’re doing our best to ensure the site’s long-term sustainability, and this kind of advertising is one of the ways we’re able to stay online. Wah Waaaaaaaah. 😉
If you’d like to help us move toward a more reader-supported model, you can check out the options over at http://offbeathome.com/supporters Or just do the ol’ ad blocker install.
First! Thank you for the link. I’ve been meaning to contribute for a while, and this was a good reminder to do so. I love you guys and the whole Empire, I visit at least once daily and want to make sure I support that.
That really sucks about the pop up ads though… I know you guys have to stay afloat and I definitely respect that, but for me this means my visits to OBH will have to change to computer-only time. The ad takes up almost the whole browser window on my phone, and that just doesn’t work for me.