Grilled Steak & Vegetable Wild Rice Salad

A hearty main dish salad of grilled steak, zucchini, mushrooms and peppers tossed with wild rice and topped with olives, artichoke hearts, and feta cheese.

If you've been on my FB page lately, you'll see evidence that my motto is Grill All The Things. I don't know if it's because I'm so stoked about having a decent grill or because I can't stand to see a hot cooking appliance (NOT in my kitchen) underutilized or what. I just know that I've been routinely grilling some vegetables, fruit, and perhaps a protein or a pizza each time I fire it up. I've learned how to get the propane tank refilled, and I'm really looking forward to playing once the summer bounty of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share is arriving in my kitchen.

Grilling often means that I've got extra grilled stuff to use on the off days. Following that 'cook once, eat twice' philosophy, I've got a main dish spring salad to share with you today. This hearty salad is for the days when you've worked hard [weeding, pruning, mulching, planting, doing a marathon 5K instead of reading the Sunday paper--pick your reason for a hearty salad]. It's satisfying and can be customized to suit your tastes with optional toppings. I went with a Mediterranean theme because I'm sort of stuck on artichokes, olives and feta cheese these days.

A warm day followed by a cool evening is a great time for a filling salad such as this. We enjoyed it slightly warm, tossing all of the previously grilled items with hot rice. My daughter preferred the leftovers served at room temperature, with plenty of cheese.

For other recipes using mushrooms, please see my Mushroom Recipes Collection. For other recipes using Zucchini, please see my Zucchini Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. Want to know how to Use This Blog? Click here.

Black Eyed Pea and Kale Salad in Salumi Cups: A New Year's Day Good Luck Appetizer

A bite size appetizer of black eyed peas and kale salad, served in salumi cups. A terrific bite to ensure good luck in the New Year.

Why is it considered good luck to eat black eyed peas on New Year's day?  Since I didn't learn about this tradition until I lived in the South as an adult, do Northerners/East Coasters/ Westerners/Midwesterners not have good luck ever?  What about folks in other countries?  Not everyone eats black eyed peas, you know.
Heavy questions for a busy time.  All I know is in addition to jumping into the New Year (from a stair, not a chair) I like to eat black eyed peas this time of year.  I'm good with these traditions--one's silly fun to do, and the other's tasty.
Sometimes I like to make Hoppin' John, sometimes I like to change it up a bit.  Here's a bite size appetizer way to get your New Year Good Luck, and if meat is not your thing, there's a bonus recipe below to an alternate salad/leftover remake.
Updated Note:  My mom emailed me that she knew salumi was not a typo but she didn't know what it was.  Salumi is the name for a category of dry cured meat.  Salami and prosciutto are examples of salumi.  I'm thinking pepperoni may be as well.  Learn something new?  I try to each day!

Leftover Remake: Ham and Bean Soup--No Salt Added + Slow Cooker option (Leftover Ham Week)

My spouse took this photo.  This flower that has sprouted in a seam between the tiles on the roof of the Believer's Palace in Baghdad, which was actually a decoy building to hide a bunker that was built underneath the palace.  On my FB page I've shared what it looked like just to the right of the photo.

Bloom where you are planted.

To me, this quote exemplifies the best of military spouses.  Due to our spouses' careers, we often find ourselves re-creating our lives every few years as we move across the globe.  So many military spouses I know are enthusiastic, energetic people genuinely interested in exploring what makes this new location different than the last home.

It was with this spirit of adventure that I joined the local military spouse group for a tour of Dorothy Lane Market.  DLM is an amazing grocery store less than one mile (according to Map My Walk) from my home.  You may know of Wegman's--the Northeast US chain of grocery stores known for amazing customer service, happy employees, and terrific products.  DLM is a 3 store midwestern version.  During our tour of DLM, the thing that struck me was how similar to my kitchen the store is run.

Stores, they're just like us.

I make no secret that I'm partial to marked down produce, day old bread, and discounted meat and dairy products.  I'd noticed that I never saw magical markdown stickers at DLM, and during the tour I learned why.  Primarily, most of the baked goods and dairy products are picked up by different shelters each day.  But the rest of the stuff?  Tom told us it gets made into soups for the hot foods area, into salads, and into prepared foods sold in the ready-to-eat section.  Have you ever looked at your fridge and thought, "well, I need to use up that half onion, that baked potato, that bit of chard, that ham . . ."?  Can you imagine having an entire produce section/meat department/dairy department at your disposal?  Wowza.

During our tour we went from the top of the store to the basement, checking out different departments along the way and enjoying samples--including amazing fresh mozzarella made by the very talented Tracey.  Wow, that on a pizza, with some cherry tomato pesto and CSA farm share spinach?  We checked out the kitchens--does anyone other than Hobart make commercial dishwashers?  I really appreciated the chance to peek behind the scenes of a place I shop at frequently--all because of a curious military spouse's initiative.  Thanks, Aileen!

When we moved in to our home, our neighbors welcomed us with a box of cookies and Killer Brownies® and I was just blown away.  Seriously amazing goodies.  I'd known that we could walk down to Graeter's ice cream before we moved in, but this DLM store was new to me.

I was delighted when my daughter went Christmas shopping at Dorothy Lane Market.  No, she did not give me a Killer Brownie.  Instead, she gave me a container of beans + a recipe for Heavenly Ham® Bean Soup.  Recently she helped me make the soup--and her interpretation of the seasonings turned it into a delicious soup without any additional salt (the ham is salty enough, we think).

I used to buy the bags of Ham Been soup that contained such a pretty array of beans plus a seasoning packet.  I'd follow the recipe, using my leftover ham bone, and make a delicious soup.  Then I read the contents of that seasoning packet and resolved to make my soup without it, and it never really turned out right.  Something was just off.

I'm so glad I had my daughter help me make this recipe I'm sharing with you today.

There are 2 cool things about this recipe.  First, the recipe includes the amounts and kinds of dry beans*, so if I wanted to make up quart jars of my own pretty bean mix for gift giving I could.  Second, I got to use a jar of crushed tomatoes that I put up in the fall (which, come to think of it, would make a good pair of jars to give:  a jar of crushed tomatoes plus a jar of dried beans plus the recipe to use both to make soup).

*If you want to make your own pretty bean mix, here's what the recipe suggests:  1/2 cup (dry) each of lentils, split peas, black-eyed peas, pinto beans, navy beans, black beans, red kidney beans and lima beans.  Four cups total of mixed beans.