Grandpa Gotta Cook—Salad Buffet
Sometimes, You Just Want A Salad
Let's face it, guys. Sometimes, your body just says, "Enough is enough." You've been eating all those those fast foods, junk foods, fried foods, and your stomach is in a whirl, your intestines are in knots and you just feel blah.
You need something that's going to reboot your palate and your gastrointestinal system. You need...
...a salad buffet.
Yeah, I know. What's happened to you Grandpa? This hard fork make you go soft or something?
Be that as it may, this meal took place before the hard fork, and it was high time it did.
However, just because there's going to be some vegetables and fruit involved, doesn't mean there can't be some steak and shrimp mixed in with it. In fact, I highly recommend you do just that.
Fruit Salad
Fruit salads can be basically whatever you want, as long as there's fruit in it. In this case, I used what we had on hand, which included apples, bananas, watermelon, grapes and peaches. The cantaloupe in the image above that you see in the background would have gone in too had it been ripe.
The watermelon was the last of the ones that grew in our garden this year, and apparently the plant saved the best for last. It turned out not too bad, relatively speaking.
Because this was going to be a buffet, that meant that each person was free to choose what fruit they wanted (if any) and how much. Best thing about a buffet is, you provide the ingredients and if folks don't like it, it's on them.
Steak And Shrimp Salad
Same thing applied to the regular salad. With salad shrimp, chunks of grilled steak, shredded carrots, cut mushrooms, olives, bell pepper and cucumber, grated cheddar cheese or a three cheese blend, bacon bits, grape tomatoes, black beans and a romaine lettuce base, there was plenty to choose from.
Probably the coolest thing about salad is, you can eat plenty of the fixings and not feel like you overloaded your plate, even though you overloaded the plate. Mine looked pretty full. That might be why there's not an image of it. Just picture a plate piled high with everything but cucumbers and the three cheese blend and you've pretty much got it.
Oh, plus a garlic Italian dressing that wasn't half bad, though I probably should have gone with my trusty Thousand Island instead.
Results
I don't think my youngest son was so thrilled. His comment: "Who knew you could eat so healthy?"
His wife, though, thought it was "very good," and so did my wife. Three out of four isn't bad. The steak was sirloin with salt and pepper. Very tasty.
I've already promised we'll do it again. One of these days, I'd like to go for a Cobb salad or some other variation, since I've already done a Taco Salad before.
By the time I finished the fruit salad, I was pretty full. A few hours later, though, I was wondering if I'd eaten enough. But I wasn't feeling blah anymore.
Mission accomplished.
ABOUT THIS POST
Grandpa Gotta Cook participates in the Food Fight Friday contest. Anyone is welcome to join. Simply post using the #fff tag, wait until sometime on a Friday to post, and make sure to check out the other entries, since we all vote on which food related post we liked the best. The post doesn't even have to be something you made. It just has to have food in it somewhere.
Photos by Glen Anthony Albrethsen.
Ah ha! So your wife is home @glenalbrethsen? I hope she had a good trip.
I often do a buffet when my brother and his family come to visit, although I wouldn't call it a salad buffet. 😁
We have quiche, cold meats, cheeses, crisps, dips, different breads and all sorts. As well as the usual salad leaves, tomatoes, cucumber etc.
It's my sister-in-law's favourite but for me, salad never satisfies the emotional side of eating.
Have a fun weekend! 😊
She is back. She flew in late last Friday. So late that it was close to 1 AM by the time we got home from the airport.
Yeah, now, that sounds more like the way to do it, if I'm not the one preparing all of that or laying it all out and then picking it all up. :)
There isn't a whole lot of emotional satisfaction in eating just salad is there? That was probably the reason for me adding the steak, shrimp and beans. Needed something other than greens and other vegetables.
Not sure how fun it's going to be, but I do hope to have a good weekend. And I wish you a good one, too. :)
Thanks @glenalbrethsen. So far so good.
I've just completed another collage for Inktober so am feeling really good about that. It's very relaxing and good fun to be creating stuff again.
I need the down time as we're looking after the grandkids for 5 days during the next 2 weeks. 😱
Being in the attic is not as relaxing as it used to be though since the neighbours have started playing loud music which infiltrates the space. Still, that's better than them screaming at each other which seems to have become a regular occurrence lately.
Oh my. Look at the time. I'm later for dinner.
Catch you later . . . 😁
Oh yeah, the salad king strikes again. Sometimes we just need a good dose of heavy greens. That doesn’t mean we can’t add in the reds, yellows, purples, blues, and pinks, it just means we need to eat some plants. Of course @glenalbrethsen makes the king of salads at his house… I mean come over and set up a salad station here anytime.
Everything looks truly scrumptious and it’s good to hav enough back on the Friday wagon my friend! I’m glad salad was able to take the blah out of you :)
Hey, @puravidaville.
It's good to be back. Now that my wife is home from her vacation while recovering from hernia surgery, and the hard fork is over, I'm hoping to get back into the groove here. Need more posts other than this one on Friday, though, in order to pull that off.
King of salads is a bit much, but I did like having everyone create their own. Made it a lot easier on me. Chopping up vegetables and some fruit isn't that tough. And the steak didn't take more than 10-ish minutes, so that was easy, too. All in all I think I was able to wrap it up in under an hour, which is good for me. :)
What really made me lean to the salads was I didn't know if I was preparing something for everyone or not, because the youngin's were threatening to head off to Red Lobster. They didn't end up going. I'm not sure what my wife and I would have done had they gone—she's not so keen on eating out—so we probably would have had more salad fixings leftover is all. :)
Well I personally love the idea of a home salad bar… you chop and set out all of fixings and the clan feeds themselves. It’s brilliant! Believe it or not we don’t make a ton of salads in my house but these “do it yourself” greens are welcome on our TV trays (dinner table) anytime :).
I’m hoping your wife has a speedy recovery and it sounds to me like you killed this dinner challenge.
Well, thanks for that.
My wife, according to the surgeon, is fully recovered. She went back to work for the first time this week and seemed to make it through, so that's good.
We generally end up with the prepackaged salads that I'm not that fond of. The lettuce always looks like it's been sitting around too long. However, that's what we used for the base. My wife had just bought it that day, so that worked out okay. It didn't have to sit in the refrigerator very long.
That’s good to hear! Why do prepackaged salad lettuce always look that way… I find I have the same complaint so I just stopped buying them. It’s probably better I cut the lettuce myself anyway… it’s always impressive to me that cutting up a salad still takes about 20-30 minutes… 🤷🏼♀️ Maybe I’m just a slow chopper. :)
howdy sir Glen! wow look at that steak! lol. that's what I noticed first. Yeah that's an acceptable way to eat steak! It looks really wonderful and healthy, I'd scarf that down several times a week no problem!
Yeah, me, too. I mean, if you're going to eat a salad, you might as well make it worthwhile is what I figure. And no one said you can't have a variety of proteins to go with your salad, a la steak, shrimp and black beans.
I guess there's some protein in cheese, too. Don't want to forget that.
It's when it's all greens and half of those were once classified as weeds that you simply did not eat before is where I run into issues. I don't care how good they are for me, they taste like weeds, and they're always going to taste like weeds.
I probably should have taken a close up of the steak. It did look good, and was even tastier than it looked. :)
sir Glen! oh that steak looked wonderful even as small as it was in the photo! lol. Weeds! ha! once a weed always a weed! lol.
Is that the first time you've done a salad on your Friday post?
Is your wife back from Mexico?
Good question. I couldn't find it, but I do believe I've made a post about Taco Salad before, but I can't remember if it was before Food Fight Friday appeared or after. At any rate, since I can't find it, it's possible that I didn't even post about it, period. That would be the only other salad I've made this year.
My wife came home from Mexico a week ago. Flew in late, plane was delayed, had to go through customs, etc. We got home close to 1 AM last Saturday.
She seems to be doing well. She's wishing she'd stayed in Mexico though. That usually happens. :)
sir Glen! oh...well is that a problem? I mean that she wishes she stayed in Mexico? She means if you could come join her right?
But at any rate, that feeling wears off after awhile I'm assuming.
Is customs a pain to go through?
It can be. Depends on what you'd like to take back. We've had them take stuff out and throw them away before. Food stuff, mostly, just because they felt like it, not because it posed one iota of a hazard.
Just dumb really. That's what I feel about the entire TSA deal. It's dumb. Terrorists can still get on. They need to be a little more inventive in some cases, but if they have people who will vouch for them, they'll get waved on anyway.
So, it makes no sense to herd the rest of us through like criminals in waiting while they let the bad guys in through the back door.
re: join her
Um, maybe? :) I think she would eventually miss me. There's just a lot of stress on her right now because she's the only source of regular income right now.
She'll still want to go back, and I'm sure she will in the not too distant future.
sir Glen I didn't know the TSA were that stupid although I hear people complain about them all the time. But then occasionally they do a story where someone tests them and gets all kinds of weapons through or something!
So they're just typical federal employees who don't care that much or enjoy being able to tell people what to do. wonderful.
But come on sir, your wife "would eventually" miss you?
I don't believe that for a second, she might think she could stay away from you but she'd start missing you right off if she thought it could be permanent. I have no doubt.
Well, Mrs. J is moving at a good pace toward that county jailer job. she had her background check come back clean of course, she goes next week for a physical and psych test so I think in a couple of weeks she'll be bossing inmates around! It's pretty remarkable. I'm still a little stunned.
When she gets a full time position and set hours I may have to get a job opposite her hours. I'd have to go very part time here unless the price of steem shot up.
I'm not remember exactly which bomber it was that got on the plane—probably the underwear bomber—but they were vouched for by some person. They convinced airport security or someone at the gate to let them on. Fortunately, the bomb burned him but did not explode.
The bomber was a person of interest, and he was still let on. I've also heard of people taking all kinds of things through the checkpoints. My wife can't make it home with all of the bottles of orchata she bought one time in Mexico, but others can get guns into the main cabin of the plane.
So, anyway. I'm not a fan.
They apparently don't get paid a whole lot—$25,000-$35,000 a year—they don't carry weapons and they have no authority to make arrests, which I would hope means they have no authority to detain you. I'm also wondering how they have authority to do any screening or searching whatsoever.
re: Mrs. J
Quite amazing. And if you're stunned, well, I am, too. So her pay wouldn't be enough? Hmmmm. Hate to see you go part time here, but I guess we all end up doing what we have to do. I'm ready for the cost of STEEM to go up.
This looks delicious! You are such a cool grandpa ;)
Hey, @merrij. That's kind of you to say. I'm not sure if the granddaughter got any of it or not. I was too busy filling up my own plate. :) No, she generally eats earlier and I don't think the food was ready until about 6 pm.
I think it was pretty tasty, and I'm glad I had the steak, shrimp and beans there, too. It actually did add to the salad in my opinion.
I'm not sure how often I'm going to be doing salads for dinner, though. I do make a taco salad that I don't think I've posted about yet, which I really like. It's just basically a taco with Americanized fixings, but with salad instead of tortillas.
It's been a while since I made that, so we'll see if I do that.
I’m always up for a good salad, but you add shrimp and steak??? Lordy Lordy help me to to be able to recover from the food coma that will leave me in.
Healthy eating is a must, but I believe you gotta keep a little percentage of crappy fast food I take to keep things balanced. 😜😜
I'd hardly call this a dropping of fast good all together, so no worries there, @foodfightfriday. It might be an overdue restructuring of my eating habits and a rebalancing of ratios. However, fast food is, well, just too fast to let the convenience of a burger or a burrito slip by if I'm out and about. So, no worries.
The food coma, though, I'm not sure what to tell you about that one. The steak and shrimp were there to liven things up a little, add some protein and additional flavor, along with the black beans.
Don't worry, there will more out of me than just salads from now on. :)
I laughed out loud at that one! Now I gotta remember to come back in 6 minutes.
I figured that might catch the discerning eye. :)
I've been known to play Captain Obvious from time to time. Sadly, I've found that what I think is painfully obvious, isn't always so. So, I say it and let the audience determine the level of obviousness.
My wife makes a fruit salad that includes apples, walnuts and a sour cream sauce. It's pretty good, but not what you're expecting with a fruit salad. And of course, the actual fruit is outnumbered. :)
Sounds delicious @glenalbrethsen. Happy Friday, nice to see you in the kitchen again.
My fruit salad tends to be cool whip nuts coconut and whatever fruit I can find to add in. So technically it is still fruit salad. Now I am starting to wonder is coconut a fruit?
hey, @headchange.
just looked it up, and apparently a coconut can be considered a seed, a fruit, and a nut, so you get three in one.
Sounds good to me, whatever the coconut is. Especially when the other fruit gets added in.
I like mine in Jell-O. Orange, red or purple. Not so found of green. :)
That looks like a really tasty dinner. I don't think you have to classify it as "healthy." Maybe your son is just being too picky. I think you did well. Who says things can't be tasty and good for you?!
He likes carbs more than most anything else, and if there's meat thrown in, he's good. The rest of it, well, it can come and go. His wife isn't big on leafy greens or most vegetables, either, and she's the skinniest of all of us.
I don't know that I did classify it as healthy. I just though it was a welcome change from all the other stuff I'd been eating. And it was. And, it was much more natural than the other stuff, too, and less processed, even though technically I did process stuff by chopping them up. I just didn't stuff them into other things or create something that doesn't exist in nature.
I think this is about as close to tasty and good for you that I've come. It's always lacking one or the other. :)
Most things in life can skew one way or the other. It's nice when you find that balance though.
Maybe your son just needed a nice loaf of french bread on the side or something. That would have helped fill him up! :D
Yeah, probably, but believe me, he doesn't need to eat more carbs. He survived it, too. He tends to come around after he's more or less forced to eat something a few times. It's just in the interim where he likes to jab at you about meal choices. Most of the time, though, he's fine. He's not that picky of an eater, which I feel his wife is. And it's stuff like lettuce, and pineapple and olives, onions, eggs—things you would hardly throw on a junk food list. Yet her big problem is keeping weight on.
I can understand someone having an issue with certain foods because of a medical diet, but I have a difficult time dealing with people who just don't like certain foods. When I was growing up, we ate anything. People loved having us over to their houses because we didn't complain. Most kids would complain about what their parents made, so just like that the parents liked us better than their kids. Ha ha. Ok, maybe not better, but at least they weren't upset to see us.
I can't think of a single time we were ever invited over to someone else's house (except family on a holiday) for a meal. In our case, we weren't picky eaters, but we were big eaters, so that would have been a problem, maybe.
With my wife, we've had invitations, mainly because we end up extending four times as many invitations as we ever receive. I don't know if that's normal or not, but that's how it works out for us.
My boys are pretty decent eaters. And the other daughter-in-law is, too. And that's not to say that the one living with us isn't. She'll eat plenty of the stuff she likes. She just isn't that fond of everything I might want to make. :)
I think other people's children, as a rule, are people's favorites over their own. It's kind of like grandkids. You get to see them when you want and then you can send them home when you don't. :)
I more meant when I was a kid and we would go to friends' houses to play. Sometimes people would comment about how we'd eat anything and that we weren't picky. When we had some friends over to our house, we found out that some people could be picky because they didn't like what our parents made. That didn't make the parents happy.
I don't know what the normal ratio is for invites given to invites received. I don't tend to give or receive many at this point. It's been a tougher season, so isolation can happen.
It sounds like your daughter-in-law is ready to start making more meals that she does like for everyone! :D
Yep, if you like the people, you get to have fun with them. When you're tired of them, they leave. It's a great setup.
Hey Glen :) We love a salad buffet kind of dinner, and yours looked delicious! Adding the fruit salad was a good idea too ... as long as there's fruit in it though ;)
Very much a prerequisite, @lynncoyle1. I figured I'd better spell it out for the less initiated. Like my son might try to get away with no fruit. If he could eat the meat and shrimp without the salad fixings, he definitely would.
Funny thing is, his less than 100-lbs wife doesn't like salad that much either. :)
Your son and his wife remind me of my son when he was very young and didn't like any vegetables, except corn. He would always be so proud of himself (I age my veggies mom) because he'd lick the salt and butter off of it and not touch the actual corn kernels, and call it 'eating his veggies' :)
Well, I'm hoping they're not going to end up passing this on to their daughter, or that she will somehow manage to acquire a taste for more than just bread and meat. It's not a good thing to fall into when you're older, let alone from an early age.
I know palates change over time. Mine has, but I ended up with all kinds of fruits and vegetables because my mother would include them in meals and we just didn't get to eat anything else if we didn't like it.
We'll see. They're both the youngest of their families raising a firstborn child. I think they do pretty well, actually. It's just a little tough sometimes to watch it all unfold. :)
I'm sure it is!! The one thing I really appreciated from my mother-in-law was that she never said anything unless I asked for help. They lived very close to us, and I saw them almost daily. She'd raised six kids, so I knew that she knew better on so many things, and probably bit her tongue off at times, but she never said a peep.
That sounds like a great mother-in-law. I'm not sure my wife is living up to the holding her tongue part. She is a Mexican grandma after all, and they seem to be wired differently. I don't think my mother has said that much to my wife, either, but that could also be that we didn't see each other that often (we lived in Southern California to begin with while they were still up here in Oregon), and then when we did move up, we were far enough away that those opportunities to say things weren't readily available.
From what I've been able to observe, there is more than one way to go about things, and whether or not most of those are measurably different in results, who knows. There's obviously right and wrong ways, but setting and establishing a routine for children that is regular and consistent seems to be most important, whether I agree with or like the methods or not.
Mexican grandmothers are not wired for that, unless of course their jaws are literally wired haha
I think that's it in a nutshell, and probably works the same for adults too :)