Salad for Supper
Dressing:
2 tablespoons olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
3 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 cloves crushed garlic
fresh ground sea salt and lemon pepper to taste
agave nectar to taste (optional)
Salad:
1 head romaine or butter lettuce
cherry tomatoes, as many as you like, sliced in half
2 cups cooked brown rice
2 cups cooked (or 1 can) garbanzo beans
2 stalks celery, chopped
pine nuts to taste
Whisk all of the ingredients for the dressing together until creamy. I provided approximate measurements, but I don't use exact measurements here, just juice the lemon and then add more or less Dijon or olive oil etc. depending on my mood. Just keep whisking and tasting and adding until you like it.
Once the dressing is done, toss it with the salad ingredients and you have an easy, hearty, protein-full dinner! We eat this as often as 3 or 4 nights a week, sometimes.
The variations on this salad are endless. I change up the beans and the grains (black beans for garbanzos, couscous for the brown rice) and use spinach instead of or in addition to the lettuce so that I don't get bored.
SO HOW'D IT GO?
I just wanted to add that I made this again last night, but this time I made it with a brown rice-wild rice blend - OH WOW - sooo goood!! I will definitely use this rice from now on. It gives the salad a wonderful chewiness. I also used a slightly different dressing - basically the same as this, except I used a bit of dry mustard (instead of liquid dijon mustard) and omitted the garlic. I definitely recommend adding some avocado because that is my favorite part of the salad!
I really liked the salad but the dressing was a bit too strong for me. I will try this again but use maybe a balmasic vingear instead of lemon juice. I also sprinkled on a little flax for more fiber. I realy liked the rice in it, I never would have thought to put rice in a salad but it was so tasty. Overall, very good. Thanks for posting the recipe!
Very tasty and easy. I never would have thought to put brown rice in salad with lettuce, but it was really good with all the other stuff mixed in. I added craisins to mine because I love craisins and used 1/2 Romaine and 1/2 spinach. And it was very yummy.
I was looking to have salad for supper one night..and lo and behold, I found this recipe, Salad for Supper! :) I thought this was very good. The dressing is delicious, but I found that I needed to double it to adequately dress 4 main dish salads. I used black beans instead of garbanzos, I didn't use any sweetener in the dressing, and I also added other things to the salad - diced avocado, diced carrot, and chopped yellow bell pepper. This is definitely a versatile recipe that can be added to or modified to suit your needs and tastes. Thanks for a great recipe!