January 6, 2015

Balsamic Spinach Salad

None of these product brands have paid me to be pictured.
Or, to put it another way, I'm getting screwed.
Every now and again, despite our best efforts, we all end up making a salad. Maybe you're hosting a meal and don't want the women there to think you're a caveman. Maybe the only store near you is a produce store. Maybe you're just depressed and want to punish your mouth. It's nothing to be ashamed of; it happens to the best of us (I'm lying to comfort you). The important thing is to not let it get you down! Just because you're eating the food that normal food eats, it doesn't mean you can't make it awesome! Does it? Probably not!


Ingredients:


4 cups of Baby Spinach
1 pint of Raspberries
1/2 cup Slivered Almonds
2 TBSP Apricot Jam (What exactly is the difference between jam and jelly? I don't care. Also, shut it)
3 TBSP Balsamic Vinegar
3 TBSP Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 tsp Tamari (Tamari is kind of like a rich Japanese soy sauce that tastes mostly like soy sauce. But more so. If that doesn't make sense to you, you haven't had Tamari. NOTE: side effects of Tamari include cyclical logic)


The first step is to weep for your lost manhood. Or womanhood. Or PRIDE, dag nabbit...hood. Once you've established that life has gone downhill via weeping, it's time to wash your salad. That may sound like a Roy Rogers way of threatening to kick someone's ass, but I was being literal. Fruits and vegetables tend to grow either in the dirt, or in a dirt-adjacent location, and bring lots of fun critters and dirt along with them. So wash them, or resign yourself to having a gritty salad full of unintended protein.


Now that you've washed everything, and probably taken a few showers, to get that image out of your mind, you can start assembling your salad. First let's make us a dressing. Mix together your vinegar, oil, tamari, and apricot jam, using any of these mixing implements, listed in order of descending wussiness:


food processor/blender
immersion blender
mechanical whisk,
manual whisk,
fork,
hunting knives,
sheer willpower/telekinesis


Is it wrong for a picture of salad to make me hungry? Maybe.
Now the time has come to pour your clean spinach, raspberries, and dressing into a large bowl, and toss them together, using either bourgeois salad tongs, wholesome working-class forks, mildly gross hands, or the aforementioned telekinesis of badassery. Then sprinkle the almonds over the top, and enjoy despite its inherently salad-y nature!

Optional/tasty extra step for masochists:
To make your salad even more awesome, toast the almonds. Spread them out on a sheet pan, and put them in a 300 degree oven. Check in on them OFTEN, because nuts that are roasting are devious little buggers. They like going from not cooked at all, straight to super burned with as little in-between time as possible. They do this because they're jerks who like screwing with you. Don't give them the satisfaction. Thwart them with your vigilance! I'm done now.

3 comments:

  1. Want a tip about toasting nuts? I had the same raw to burned issue for a long time... also, you had me chucking out loud with all that telekinesis :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My telekinesis often causes the laughter. What's the nut trick?

      Delete
  2. Jam has pieces of fruit in it. Jelly is chunk-less.

    ReplyDelete