Food In Many Forms

In my search for easy recipes, I ended up on quite a few emailing lists - Better Homes & Gardens, Food Network, Tastebook all have the privilege of spamming me. At work today, I was browsing through recipes for "Crisp Summer Salads" and I was shocked at what passed for a salad. The first "salad" - The Layered Spinach and Pot Sticker Salad - on the list included potstickers, strawberries and strawberry jam as ingredients. Then to add insult to injury, they tell you to whip up a recipe of " Spiced Chips ". As is frozen chicken pot stickers weren't unhealthy enough. It isn't a salad just because it has spinach! Next is the Southern Cobb Salad , and to it's credit, it looks like a salad. However, I don't even want to think about what constitutes the " cheese dressing ". I'm terribly confused by the Smoked Salmon and Melon Salad . I guess it counts as fruit salad, but why I would mix salmon with cantaloupe, honeydew and blueber...

I've been home for the summer for a few weeks now, and my dad being the health freak that he is, confronted me about the high salt content of some of the pre -prepared foods that I eat. One of my favorite is Near East Mediterranean Curry Couscous. It is so delicious and takes five minutes to cook! However, it does have 550 mg of sodium per serving. With three servings per box, that is a lot of salt (69% of your Daily Value). My dad insisted it would be simple to replicate the combination of spices that I love so much - "Just had some curry and turmeric and it will taste the same!". But I am sure there must be more to it. The ingredients list includes "salt, peas, molasses, spices, carrots, garlic, turmeric spice, natural flavors, parsley, honey and onions." This is where the research comes in. I have to figure out what those ambiguous "spices" are. Possibilities include: - Cumin - Curry powder (Duh, this probably should have been first in the list...

I was making macaroni and cheese for lunch today, and I thought maybe I could make up for the unhealthiness of it if I added some vegetables to it. When I looked online for recipes that other people had made, I found so many with broccoli, carrots, cauliflower and peas - some of my least favorite vegetables. They brag that you can barely taste them! They tell you to chop up the broccoli nice and small so you can't hardly taste it. But I like vegetables, I don't want to hide the taste. I did find one recipe from fitness magazine that was to my liking. It had zucchini, peppers and sweet onions, with a Parmesan and ricotta cheese sauce I believe. I wonder how it would go with my boxed white cheddar spirals...