Roasted Grape salad / Eggplant sandwich

Grape Salad from Myrecipes


Eggplant Sandwich from Allrecipes


You know when you don't eat grapes in time, and they lose their crunchiness? Well yesterday I had a bagful of such grapes. They just weren't fit to eat by themselves. I have really been into roasting vegetables lately, and I thought...why not roast grapes?

Well, I googled it and sure enough, there were directions. I knew it wasn't crazy. Toss the grapes in a little olive oil and a pinch of salt, and bake on 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes. I tasted one right after they came out of the oven - they taste surprisingly like a cherry cobbler.

I found the above recipe for a grape salad, and I simply omitted the chicken and used the roasted grapes instead of fresh.
If you use these on a salad, though, be careful because they retain a lot of juice. To avoid a soggy salad, you'd probably do best to add them on top of each salad portion, instead of mixing them into the bowl.

My sister made the eggplant, and it was yummmmy. I ate mine in a pita instead of the bun.

Surf Club salad

Maranui Surf Club Salad

This is a squash and chickpea salad, with coconut milk, lime, and curry. I estimate this salad has 200 calories per 3/4 c serving.

My fresh acorn squash was too hard to cut, so I meant to soften it a bit in the microwave....but I absentmindedly cooked it for almost 6 minutes. Consequently, my squash was much softer than the recipe calls for. It's supposed to be toasted cubes of squash. Because it was more creamy, the result tasted like a coconut-y, exotic potato salad! It's actually really good, it's just a different texture than the original recipe.

Vegetarian Griller Salad

This is a yummy recipe from Morningstar Farms that I altered a bit.

Griller Salad (serves 1)

2 cups baby spinach
1/4 - 1/2 red bell pepper (cut into strips)
3 slices avocado
1/4 c sprouts
1 MF Grillers soy patty (cooked and sliced into strips)
3/4 TB olive oil
black pepper (to taste)

Toss it all together and you're done. :)

Breakfast Burritos & Pineapple-corn salad

Ok, dinner last night....I woke up craving potato breakfast burritos but I didn't have the willpower to make them for breakfast. So I made them for dinner instead.

I based these off of this recipe, however, I made a lot of changes. The original recipe has a whopping 887 calories per serving. I took out the chorizo to make it vegetarian, used only 1 TB of olive oil, used only 3/4 package of neufchatel, and used corn tortillas instead of flour. I cut up the potatoes and baked them to make them softer, and I also added some yellow onion to the mix. After all the changes, we end up with 420 calories for 2 burritos, or 210 a piece. Not too bad.

The corn salad came about because I wanted to use up some crushed pineapple we had in the pantry. So I searched for some recipes and this one was incredibly simple and easy. Ironically, I am infamous for hating corn. But I decided to give it a try. In actuality, I do like cream corn occasionally, fried corn, corn nuggets.....basically whenever corn has sugar and fat added to it - THEN I'll eat it. Haha.
But this corn salad isn't bad at all. It's about 100 calories for a half cup serving. Actually, probably a little less than that, since I used light mayonnaise.


Mm look at that!
Forgot to mention we used a green salsa that has tequila in it!

Picnic with Veggie Sandwiches

It was such a pretty day that we decided to pack a picnic. I made a Cobb salad based on the Cheesecake Factory's California Salad, and my sister made a variation of Pioneer Woman's Veggie Bagel.


On the salad: romaine lettuce, hardboiled eggs, craisins, bleu cheese, red onions, soy bac'n bits - 200 calories.
On the sandwich: whitewheat bread, neufchatel with chives, cucumber, red onion, sprouts, cheddar cheese - 310 calories.

This sandwich....is delicious. If you look at PW's recipe...our version has considerably less calories, since we used bread instead of the giant bagel, and we left out the avocado. I also left out the muenster cheese....the reason the picture has two slices of cheese is because I photographed my sisters instead of mine. So there you go.


We didn't want to actually bake anything, so we cheated and bought a berry pie from Tom Thumb. It was pretty good. The only thing I feel bad about (diet-wise) is that I drank a glass of Dr. Pepper (GASP). I never drink Coke (soda). I mean never. But I stupidly forgot my water bottle and there was nothing else to drink. So I regret using up calories for that.

Then I intended to have a light dinner, since we had such a big lunch.....until we up and went to Ikea. We always buy a box of double chocolate crisps when we go, and I couldn't resist....I had FOUR of them while walking through the store! At 94 calories a piece, that's 376 calories on cookies alone. Curse those delicious cookies!