Make ahead Wheat Berry Salad

This salad is one of my top 10 favorite recipes.  The whole wheat kernel base is layered with artichokes, bitter greens, peppers and olives and finished with the classically Greek lemon-olive oil-feta flavor party.  Once you've got the wheat berries prepared, it goes together quickly and only gets better over the course of a couple days in the fridge...read: it *likes* to be made ahead and the leftovers are delicious!  It can stand to be out of the fridge for awhile (and tastes better served at room temp anyway) so it's suitable for picnics or dinner at your kids' Little League games. 

It's also a recipe that I never quite make the same way twice...it depends on what I have on hand and how willing I am to have 1/2 a can of something hanging around after I finish the recipe.  It's not so much a recipe anymore as guidelines :D  Originally, it was a recipe from the Washington Post food section.  They recommended serving this as a side dish with grilled fish or chicken, but I serve it most often as a vegetarian main dish.

Wheat berries

Wheat berries are the whole kernel of wheat, what comes off the plant before it gets flattened into cereal or ground into flour.  When cooked, the  individual kernels are chewy and toothsome.  They pop between your teeth like caviar or grapes.  They have a nutty, grainy flavor and make a much more flavorful salad base than rice (the usual grain-and-vegetable salad suspect) in my opinion.

Top Row: Red bell pepper, black olives, radicchio
Middle Row: Feta, chickpeas, lemon
Bottom Row: Radicchio, cherry tomatoes, artichokes

Cooking the wheat berries is a lot like cooking dry beans.  Some folks say they can be cooked without soaking first, but I prefer the results from soaking then cooking.  You can do either the overnight soak, then cook them, or do a "quick soak"...just like for beans!  Here is how I put together this salad last night for dinner tonight...I put the wheat berries in a saucepan covered with 1" of water and brought it to a boil.  I boiled for 2 minutes, then turned off the heat and covered the pan.  I let them stand for 1 hour (this is the "quick soak" method) while we put the kids to bed.  Then I drained them, rinsed them, covered them again with water, brought to a boil, reduced the heat, covered and simmered for 50 minutes while I zoned out and watched TV.  Drain.  Ta-dah!  Cooked wheat berries!  I measured and chopped the remaining ingredients this morning, but I could have done that while the wheat berries were cooking for 100% Dinner Done Yesterday ;)

This recipe lends itself to tweaking...use regular black olives or the fancy marinated olive bar ones, use fresh red bell pepper or roasted red pepper, use radicchio or arugula or a handful of salad from a bag of spring mix, whatever you have on hand!

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Roasted spicy chickpeas

A tasty, low-fat snack to start your New Year's healthy eating resolutions off right!  I've made roasted chickpeas before following the South Beach Diet's recipe, but they're pretty darn bland and I can't get my husband or kids to eat them (for whose benefit they are made, after all!)

Beans are a pretty healthy snack that most people don't think of.  If you roast them, they'll hit the same crunchy texture points that chips and nuts do but with less fat...see below:

Per 1/4 cup        Roasted Chickpeas             Raw Almonds
Calories             75                                        135
Fat (g)               4.5                                        11
Carb (g)            10                                          5
Protein (g)         3                                           5
(calculated by myfitnesspal.com)

So I decided to try making roasted chickpeas like I do roasted nuts...tossed with a bit of oil and some kind of seasoning...and it turns out that they're pretty darn good this way!  I used homemade taco seasoning so they're salt-free, but you could use packaged seasoning mixes like ranch dressing, mixed minced fresh herbs or sweet spice mixes like pumpkin pie spice.

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Tempeh Salad

Packed for eating on the run tonight.

After the richness of Thanksgiving, I need some vegetables that aren't covered in cheese sauce or deep-fried onions.  This recipe is just the ticket, plus it goes together fast and can be made entirely in advance for a chilled salad. 

Tempeh is a soy-and-grain based food product that has a sturdy texture (unlike tofu) and a robust flavor (also unlike tofu). I'm not going to say that when you eat it, you'll think you're eating a steak but it hits the same textural and flavor points that a lot of meat products do. In fact, as I was cooking this one day, I had a delivery person at the door who commented that dinner smelled really good and he thought he might make some sausage for dinner, too LOL

I like wilted salads, so I top the greens with the hot tempeh mixture.  I get a little crunch by leaving the bell pepper and celery in this recipe raw.  You could saute the pepper and celery as well, though and wait for the whole mixture to cool before adding to the salad for a different effect.

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Chickpea couscous salad and Curried Chickpeas

I adore chickpeas, plain and simple.  I bought a 1 lb. bag of dry chickpeas at the store, and I'll be making 2 dinners from it.  One is chickpeas couscous salad and the other is curried chickpeas.  Both are prep/make-ahead friendly and freezer-kit-able.  Just awesome.

Couscous salad

First of all, you gotta cook the chickpeas.  You could buy canned chickpeas, but cooking your own is 1) cheaper, 2) not hard and 3) allows you to cook more flavorfully than what you'll get with canned. 

1. Soak the chickpeas overnight or do a quick soak by boiling them in a large pot with lots of water for 2 minutes, then cover them, take them off the heat and let them stand for 1 hour.  Drain and rinse.  Rinsing at this stage significantly reduces their, ahem, musical qualities. 
2. Cover again with water and bring to a boil.  Add 2 black tea bags (if you want), and reduce heat to simmer. 
3. Cover with the lid left slightly ajar and simmer GENTLY for 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes, depending on how much cronch you like your beans to have.  Don't cook them at too high a temperature or for too long, or else the skins will separate from the beans (and not in a good way...I screw up so you don't have to). 
4. Drain, measure out 1 or 2 cup portions (depending on how you plan to use them) and put in containers to fridge or freeze.

A reasonable schedule for doing all this is starting a long soak in the morning, draining and rinsing after dinner, and cooking while you're watching a movie.  

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Sardine Salad

This takes 5 minutes to prepare, start to finish.  No kidding.  No heating up the house with the stove or oven, and hardly any dishes to clean.  It's low-carb (even lower if you make your own dressing).  One serving is about 300 calories (if you are judicious with the salad dressing), and most of the ingredients live in your pantry.  The only thing you need to make sure to get fresh is the salad mix. 

But wait a minute...sardines??  I hear you in the Peanut Gallery.  Do you eat canned tuna?  Oh really, well sardines taste pretty much exactly like canned tuna, except not as dry.  And sardines are WAY better for you than canned tuna.  Sardines have more Omega-3 fatty acids than canned tuna, lower levels of mercury than canned tuna, more Vitamin D than canned tuna, and receive an uncomplicated "best choice" sustainability rating from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch versus the tiered rating canned tuna gets.

I highly recommend getting boneless, skinless sardines which are slightly more spensy than bone-in, skin-on but worth the savings in aggravation.  The kids didn't go bonkers for this, but they did eat some sardines.  I left the salad dressing off their plates.  The 1yo ate bites of sardine tucked into pieces of bread, and the 2.75yo ate it dunked in ketchup.  So don't skip this one just because you don't think the fam will like it...you never know until you try! 

No picture this time, since this was dinner after my extravaganza of prep-ahead cookery and I was just pooped.
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