Radicchio Salad with Beets, Pear, Walnuts and Blue Cheese: “serious autumn salad” that sticks to your ribs

Oct 20, 2009 by Anna Migeon

The benchmark for an “affordable” dinner for four at home is $10, according to Campbell Soup. I think it’s pretty hard to make a high quality meal for that little. But I take it as a challenge to find meals that really feed you—unprocessed, natural, fresh, packed with nutrients and satisfying—for that price.  I also insist that it be delicious (by my standards). If it’s easy and quick, which this one is, all the better.

The original recipe I adapted this salad from is in a Food & Wine cookbook, which called it “a serious autumn salad.”  It was indeed so serious that none of us even felt like eating the grilled salmon or carrot, potato and leek soup I’d made to follow it that evening.  Full of contrasting and complementary flavors and textures, it was all we needed.

I spent $9.74…

To Melissa G., the Recessionary Grocery Shopper: The Official Kid-Will-Eat-It Guidelines

Oct 1, 2009 by Anna Migeon

Dear Melissa G.,

Congratulations! You have been named “ground zero for the new austerity” by one of our food industry giants, according to an article I just read in Advertising Age.  Industrial edibles manufacturers, scrambling to keep their profits up while consumers like you look for ways to spend less, are taking a hard look at you, the average grocery shopper, and how you think and behave.  Melissa, you represent today’s Every Mom:  the very picture of the grocery-shopping parent. You are the bull’s eye of the target for processed food manufacturers in this economic downturn.

It’s quite an honor, and a responsibility, a sacred destiny even, Every Mom. The wellbeing of the American child is in your hands.

While Campbell Soup was analyzing your habits and attitudes…

The Caveman Salad Solution: Fast Food for Little Gourmets

May 21, 2009 by Anna Migeon

REAL CAVEMEN eat salad with fruit, even though it may sound like a bit of a girly lunch.

“I am all about salads with fruit now,” I told my husband last week during our lunch at home while our kids were at school. I had fixed for the two of us Watermelon and Arugula Salad with Walnuts. It was dressed with orange juice, lime juice, raspberry vinegar, a drizzle of olive oil. It also included a little dry ricotta salata cheese.  It was offbeat, but tasty, I thought.

A week or two earlier, I had made Watermelon Gazpacho. Gazpacho is usually basically a raw vegetable salad (no…

Cucumbers, Olives, Radish, Arugula and Feta Salad

Jan 25, 2009 by Anna Migeon

A caveman-worthy recipe (except for the feta cheese), it includes a vegetable, a root vegetable, a fruit, and a dark green leafy vegetable. All raw.

My very favorite salad based on taste alone, it’s also unbeatably easy and quick, and outstandingly toothsome.

1 English hothouse cucumber or regular cucumber, quartered lengthwise and cut crosswise into ½ inch wide pieces

1 bunch of radishes, quartered

½ lb Kalamata olives, halved

1 bunch or about five oz. of arugula (strong-flavored green salad)

2 T olive oil

1 T fresh lemon juice

1/3 lb feta cheese, cut in little cubes

Combine cucumber, radishes, olives, arugula and cheese in a bowl. Blend oil and lemon juice in a separate bowl, with a little and pepper.

Adapted from Bon Appetit’s…