Easy to Make, Healthy Salad, Mostly From Cans

Yes, I call this salad "Easy to Make, Healthy Salad, Mostly From Cans." And it's not an oxymoron.

It can also be titled Corn, Bean and Tomato Salad, Corona Lock-down Recipe #4, because the canned food was delivered to us as part of the senior citizen care package at the height of the corona lock-down. Following are the first three recipes I developed with canned food from the carton:

• Cooking With Canned Beans, Corona Lock-down Recipe #1
• Cooking With Canned Pineapple, "Apple-Pineapple Compote," Corona Lock-down Recipe #2
• "Sauerkraut Salad," Corona Lock-down Recipe #3

If you had inspected my pantry before getting these COVID-19 "care packages," you'd have found almost no cans, not even tomato paste. The few cans would have been "food gifts" from the Purim mishloach manot. But suddenly I found myself with all sorts of canned food and decided to make up recipes.

This salad is also a great vegetarian-vegan "one pot meal." It contains protein plus raw and cooked vegetables. Of course you can substitute different types of beans and vegetables and add more fresh salad. Just looking at it you can probably guess almost all of the ingredients:

canned corn
canned white beans
diced tomato
diced onion
coarsely ground pepper
dehydrated dill
dressed with a bit of olive oil and lemon juice

Yes, that's it. Think of the recipe more as inspiration than an exact recipe. Try it, and tell me how yours turned out and how you varied it. Enjoy in good health.

Easy and Healthy Cucumber Salad

We ended up with too many cucumbers, so, before they could go bad, I quickly made a "Cucumber Salad." Of course I had never made one before, so I had some research to do. Cucumber Salads used to be mainstays of Israeli summers, and I started googling "Cucumber Salad."  I was surprised to discover that Google claims it's a German dish.

I read a couple of recipes, internalized the general idea and got to work.

Ingredients:
cucumbers, sliced relatively thin
red onion, also sliced relatively thin
dehydrated dill, fresh is better but I didn't have any
barely a teaspoon of light brown sugar
a couple of tablespoons of vinegar
1 tablespoon of tamari sauce
freshly squeezed lemon juice from a quarter of a lemon

Instructions:
put cucumbers, onion and dill in a bowl
add sugar and then the rest of the ingredients
let it "sit" for a few hours
eat and enjoy

The recipes I saw online were a bit more complicated. I've simplified it. You can also spice it up a bit more. 

Super Simple Salad

My favorite type of food preparation is "easy." The other night I had promised to bring a salad to the potluck dinner my book club enjoys before we get into the meat of the book discussion. Since another member said she was brining a green salad, I decided to make mine a "Walking Salad," as my mother used to call it, a Simple Salad, just cut vegetables, perfect for noshing.

I was planning on using carrots, too, but I forgot. As you can see, the tray was full without them.  And I bought a kohlrabi, but it was rotten inside.

This salad has mushrooms, red pepper, cucumber and tomatoes. That's it.

Simple salads like these are very popular in my community. Whenever we have an event with cakes and cookies there are salads like these, too. I get a kick out of seeing young children filling cups with carrots, cucumbers and peppers, as if they're candy.