kale salad

This kale salad with feta and avocado and hummus dressing sounds really good and I might try to make it next time I get some kale from the parental homestead.

UPDATE: I made this with shredded kale (maybe 8 leaves), half a small tub of hummus, a slab of feta, half a yellow pepper, 8 olives and some quick-pickled cucumbers and their brine. Remarkably tasty, and astonishingly filling and sustaining. It also keeps just fine overnight, which is kind of miraculous for a salad.

fun with cilantro chutney

On a whim I bought some 3-layer Trader Joe’s hummus which had plain, red pepper and cilantro hummus. It was delicious and I developed a minor obsession with the cilantro layer. My mind wandered. I wanted a whole tub of cilantro hummus, but Trader Joe’s didn’t make one.

Slightly later I was in Patel Brothers buying some red lentils to feed another minor obsession with cooking dal as a way to incorporate more reputedly healthful spices into my diet. And I wandered by the chutney rack, and the lightbulb went off: maybe I could stir some coriander chutney into plain hummus and get something akin to the delicious bottom layer.

Turns out I was right, and the resulting treat is even more delicious than the original, since the chutney lends a bit more tanginess and spiciness.

Now I buy organic plain hummus and plop in unholy dollops of cilantro chutney, and put that stuff on salads instead of dressing, and dip carrots in, and put it on Triscuits. NOMS.

And I’ve also learned that cilantro chutney is fantastic on a ham sandwich. Sometimes I think that is the truest test of a condiment: Does it taste great on a ham sandwich?

possibly best salad ever

my lunch today was a bowlful of:

Trader Joe’s ready to eat butter lettuce
sliced radishes
crumbled feta
sliced green onion
diced spicy-garlic carrot pickles
Trader Joe’s chipotle hummus
half an avocado
drizzle of white wine vinegar

The feta, hummus and avocado served as dressing. It was tangy, spicy, savory and crunchy. YUM.