Tweeting a Revamp

Just over a year ago, Rob and I purchased our first home. We have loved the wonderful world of homeownership, and all the expenses – I mean, perks – that come with it. It’s been a year of projects and decorating decisions, but our recent upgrade was a backsplash in the kitchen. My favorite room needed a good dose of revamping, and Rob certainly delivered. His inner Bob Vila came out (and so did a little bit of butt crack), but after a backbreaking weekend, our kitchen had been transformed with an Artic Ice glass tile.

With that, our kitchen was rendered unusable for the weekend. So to thank Rob, but also satisfy our stomachs, I whipped up one of our favorite salads, no cooking involved. Now, I did this using about a 1-foot by 1-foot tiny square of our island, on a side where I never do any cooking. So, feeling a little like a Naked Mole Rat wearing a three-piece suit, it took a bit longer to make the salad (about 17 minutes), than normal (about 5). But it was worth the wait.

My Shredded Super Greens Salad with Watermelon and Feta is packed full of nutrient-rich cabbage, kale, and broccoli, as well as naturally sweetened and lightly dressed by the lycopene-laced melon. The hit of salty, tangy, creaminess from the feta rounds the dish and truly makes it feel like a meal. Especially when you eat it out of large-and-in-charge pasta bowls, like we did.

This salad is completely adaptable to your own taste and liking; so to assemble it, either shred using a food processor blade, or finely chop with a knife, green cabbage, red cabbage, and broccoli. I like to hand-tear the kale into small pieces for the look and softer texture against the other sturdy veg. Make whatever ratio you like – I prefer more kale than broccoli in this dish, but to each your own here. Next, add diced watermelon and feta – again, as much as you’d like. For a light dressing, mix together the juice of 1 lemon, a teaspoon of Agave, and a teaspoon of good extra virgin olive oil. Season with s&p, mix, pour, toss, and taste again. Basil is a good addition, if easily on hand. The longer the salad sits, the more it will marry flavors, but also wilt. The wilting happens because of the liquid content from the watermelon and the salt retracting natural liquid from the veg (which both exponentially add to the flavor of the dressing), as well as the shredded veg (making the small pieces more vulnerable to the liquid). I prefer the salad fresh, crunchy, and still raw-like, but again, to each your own. 

With the kitchen revamping also came a 42Potatoes revamping – the site as a slightly different new look, is now registered at 42potatoes.com, and is tweeting away in the Twitter world at 42Potatoes@TweetsTheTable. 42Potatoes is also making an appearance on Pinterest, as 42Potatoes Entertains.  For those of you who know me well (Gen, talking to you here), it was HARD for me to enter the wild world of social media – I’ve never been a Facebook, Instagram, or back in the day – Friendster – fan, where the scary world of inter/intra-connected connections act like a virtual string theory of “posts,” “likes,” and “threads.”   It was like the 2000s technology had become the “stranger danger” I knew from the 80s. But armed with the self-defense of the everyone-else-is-doing-it-so-it-just-has-to-be-totally-legit admission, I succumbed. Who knows, maybe I’ll get daring and start Facebooking. Can Facebook be a verb? Can I do that? Help me out – I’ve got to be down with the lingo in order to fit in, yo.

Be looking for some spiffy updates to the site – a Technique of the Week section, as well as a Cookbooks page. In the meantime, enjoy this super easy, wonderfully summery salad, and check out my Tweets! (was that right? – did I say that correctly?)

Enjoy!

Tags: agave, broccoli, cabbage, cheese, citrus, feta cheese, kale, lemon, main dish salads, salad, summer foods, watermelon