motd Saturday July 30, 2011 - Salads

[Guest guest]

LETTUCE

MAKE A SALAD

Saturday, 30 July 2011

So

what did I have for dinner last night? A salad. And

what did I have for dinner the night before? Yes,

another salad! Hey, it's been hot here in Los

Angeles lately. In fact, it's been hot in most parts of

the country this summer. And let me tell ya', when it's

hot like this, the chef inside me doesn't like to do a

whole lotta cooking in a hot kitchen. So I put

together some pretty amazing salads to enjoy during

these hot summer months.

I've

always told you that eating lots of salads helped me

lose weight and have helped me keep the weight

off. I love crunchy foods but I've made my way from

eating bag-after-bag of crunchy potato chips to enjoying

the taste of crunchy salads...much more.

Every salad I make begins with lettuce. In fact, I'd

say 80% of my salads are made with different kinds of

lettuce. I thought today we'd go over some of the

excellent choices of lettuce you can find in just about

every supermarket.

I was raised on Iceberg lettuce. I'll bet it's

the most popular lettuce sold in major grocery stores.

So let me ask, do you have any idea why they call it

"Iceberg"? Glad you asked. See, when they used to

transport it from town to town, they had to load mounds

of ice on top of the lettuce to keep it fresh and

crisp. You know, it's as if an iceberg was piled on top

of the lettuce. Get it? Iceberg lettuce.

I love Butter lettuce. And where does its

name come from? Well, because its leaves are smooth and

soft, you know...like buttah! While

I was in Paris, I had lots of salads that were made with

Butter lettuce. I also like this type of lettuce

because the leaves are tender and slightly sweet.

Now if you've ever had a Caesar salad, it's been made

using Romaine lettuce. Its leaves are oblong,

almost like big feathers and are a deep, dark green.

It's one of the crunchier lettuces. (And I told you how

much I love my crunch.) I cut up the Romaine lettuce to

make my own version of a Caesar salad. (I'm not a big

one for the anchovies...are you?)

You'll

find all these types of lettuce in your supermarket.

And as you know, they now sell lettuce pre-washed and

pre-packaged in the produce section. You can

buy lettuce sold this way mixed with spinach, red and

green leaf lettuce and a variety of other greens mixed

in, too. They're very pretty and if you haven't tried

them, I suggest you do. When you get home with them,

experiment with making your own exotic salads. It's

fun!

Here in Los Angeles, one restaurant actually makes a grilled

romaine lettuce salad served with a warm

vinaigrette dressing. I've tasted it and it really is

quite good.

One more thing, lettuce contains almost no

calories. So if you're on my healthy eating program, the

FoodMover, you can eat all of the lettuce you

want. So start tossing those salads, baby and soon,

you'll be tossing off those pounds, too!

Love,