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April 17, 2005

trader joe's salad

so, near my place in irvine i have an albertson's and a trader joe's. I've been shopping at trader joe's a lot, since getting to any other hippy organic type stores would be a long drive, which kind of defeats the purpose, don't you think? so i've gotten well acquainted with tj's inventory, since it's small and unchanging. For example, fage yogurt? mmmm.... But I can't quite bring myself to buy the pre-prepared salads. I'm just not a salad enthusiast. They kind of bore me. it takes a special salad to hold my interest and i've managed to make a couple of them in my lifetime. Here's one:


  • y'know those sacks of potatoes they sell at tj's? there's like three kinds of potatoes: red, gold, and exotic-looking purple. get some of that. the purple ones are awesome.
  • beets. those they don't usually sell at tj's and i got mine at the saturday farmer's market.
  • garlic
  • eggplant
  • cherry or grape tomatoes
  • ripe avocado
  • bag of mixed spring greens
  • feta. tj's has really good feta. it comes in a round container and is made with vegetable rennet. really mild, slightly sheepy flavor.

cut an approx. equal amount of beets and potatoes into little bit-sized strips, coat in olive oil, salt and pepper, basil, oregano and thyme. mix in some diced garlic. roast at 400 degrees (actually i think you could go a little lower... i just picked a number).

slice the eggplant thinly, give it the olive oil, salt and pepper and garlic treatment. maybe some oregano. toss that in the oven too. the eggplant tends to suck up a lot of oil.

as i recall, that took about 30 minutes to be done, but i'm bad with timing, and just kinda peeked in and checked every now and then. Once they are done, give them time to cool. once cool, toss that stuff, and the tomatoes and a sliced up avocado with the spring greens.

for dressing i used olive oil, balsamic vinegar, honey and black pepper. put the feta in after the dressing... i only used a wee bit.

my bf was literally struck dumb by this salad. I think it's the massive amount of fat (in olive oil form) that makes it tasty.

Posted by amanda at 09:00 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack