Friday, March 6, 2009

I adopted Simply Gluten-Free



This week, I am participating in the “Adopt a Gluten Free Blogger” event hosted by Book of Yum. I adopted Simply Gluten Free, and did her Spoon Salad and Lemon Tahini Dressing.


Simply Gluten Free is a very visually attractive site with recipes that appeal to my food philosophy; good quality fresh food, simply prepared.


I chose the spoon salad because I just love my food processor, and to get to shred pounds of vegetables? How fun! 


Her idea of doing enough for four or five days of salad eating is brilliant: my kitchen looked like I had been mulching garden leftovers by the time I was done. But a crunchy, fresh salad base is there, in my fridge, just waiting for me to finish however I want. I have been known to just skip salad rather than hauling out the cutting board and the knife, especially at lunch.


I’m glad she considered the recipe to be a guide, because despite my good intentions, the vegetables listed on the recipe weren’t the best that my supermarket had to offer. I ended up using swiss chard, cabbage, carrots, zucchini, cauliflower and a little basil.


For the dressing, the only substitution I made was using gluten free soy sauce rather than tamari. Tamari has sweeter undertones and less harshness, and I think that would have made a difference in this recipe. I liked the brightness of the dressing, but felt that it needed a touch more sweetness in the overall balance- but that was likely my soy sauce. I will add this to my regular recipes that I use, it is a good break from the vingairette rut that I get into. My hubby suggested a touch of grated fresh ginger as well.


This was a wonderful salad for the kids- I treated it like a green salad, letting everyone put on whatever dressing they liked. The kids added shredded mozzarella cheese and ranch, my hubby did the tahini dressing with some toasted sunflower seeds, and I had just a little dressing and the salad. Even my most veggie adverse teenaged boy had seconds.


Great blog, good recipes, lots of fun- thanks Simply Gluten Free!

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I like the variation of using chard, since it is one of my favorite veggies. Nicely done!

Jill said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I also love using my food processor to shred a ton of veggies. Thanks for turning me on to this recipe. I love the 'work once and eat for days' idea--I used to shred up a ton of veggies at once but got out of the habit over the winter. Your post motivated me to get back in the habit.

Jill said...

thanks for your comments!

Simply...Gluten-free said...

I never knew you adopted me - just ran into this. Thanks so much!