Opportunistic eating #1: dense salads-chicken

Opportunistic Eating (Noshing)

Unless I’m with friends or family I seldom eat “a meal.” Instead, I nosh. That’s a Yiddish word for grazing or grabbing a snack like a bowl of soup or a chunk of chocolate (organic dark).

When I feel a hunger tug I do not want to wash lettuce, spin it dry, tear it up, chop accompanying veggies, make the vinaigrette, etc. I just want to eat and I’ll go for the chocolate every time unless I have cheesecake in the house. In other words, when it comes to food I’m like a Beluga whale, an opportunistic feeder. I eat almost any real food and will choose the most available thing that I can find at the moment.

And because I want to stay healthy and keep my weight reasonable, I’ve devised strategies to keep me out of the cheesecake (which is about the easiest thing in the world to nosh. You just go after it with a fork.) In cold weather I make big pots of soupstews (thick, savory, creative pots o’ goodness.) In warm weather I make big bowls of “dense salads.” I keep them in the fridge, front and center.

Introducing “The Dense Salad”

A dense salad is a mixture of  veggies, meat, fish, grains, fruit, pasta, cheese, legumes, hard-boiled eggs, all cut into small pieces and tied together with a “dressing.” You don’t put all those things into one salad. You just pick a few things that go well together and dress them properly.

Go to the deli department of the supermarket and you’ll see many combos. They’re pricey and the dressings are “prepared,” meaning I can taste chemicals and weird non-real-food aftertastes. So today we have our first lesson on dense salads . . . .

Your Basic Chicken Salad

Chicken breasts are widely available. They’re not very flavorful which makes them a perfect choice for salad. The boneless, skinless kind are the most expensive, but probably the easiest to try if you feel unsure about setting out on this adventure. If you’re willing to pick over the meat to remove the bones and skin, you can save money.

Get out a wide, flat saucepan or fry pan with a cover. Rinse the chicken breasts and put them in it with about 1/4 inch of water. Cover, turn the heat on and bring to a boil. When it gets there (it depends on your heat source for the time so you need to pay attention. When you have constant big bubbles and lots of steam, that’s a boil) turn the heat way down. After a couple of minutes it will settle into a gentler bubbling called a simmer. Simmer for about 15 minutes.

You can insert meat thermometers (160 degrees) and all that to see if your food is safe to eat but just use common sense. Does it look like “cooked chicken” all the way through? If you can see any transparency or red or blood when you cut into it, simmer some more. Don’t simmer it for hours or it will be as tough as an old fighting cock, though even that doesn’t matter much when you’re making a salad.

What to do once the chicken is cooked

Cool it. The chicken, I mean. Remove it from the pan and put it into a bowl. Put the bowl in the fridge after you cover it with plastic wrap or a big plate.

While it’s cooling let’s see what you have in the larder that goes with it. Celery and onion are the most important. They both keep a long time so I always have them on hand. The only caveat is that the onion needs to be sweet or light. That would be “green onions” or scallions which are short lived, red onions which last longer but have more bite, or one of the “sweets,” Vidalia, Walla Walla, Burmuda or some others I don’t know.

Wash and chop up some celery and put it in a big bowl. Glass or ceramic is best. Chop up some onion and add it to the celery.

I know I haven’t given you amounts, like a cup of this and a pound of that. I learned to cook from my Grandma and Mom and other old ladies who seldom used recipes. And that’s a key to learning to feed yourself well. Pay attention to what’s in front of you not what’s on paper. So you got too much onion or it’s chopped too big . . . so what? This is not open-heart surgery. No one will die from it and next time you’ll adjust it a little to suit you better.

How to peel an onion or chop celery? Google them. There are tons of resources that already teach that. My goal is not to duplicate that information but to adjust your attitude toward “cooking” and eating.

[onion addendum added in 2022: I forgot to tell you this earlier even though it’s a technique I’ve used for years.. Chop or slice your bulb onion of any sort (i.e. not scallions) and put the pieces onto a bowl. Cover in cold water and let them float around for about 15 minutes. Drain the onions well and then add to the salad. This takes some of the bite out. As I’ve gotten older I like raw onion to be a little more gentle.]

Off the soapbox and back to the bowl

Time to take out the chicken and chop it up and put it into the bowl with the celery and onions.

Other things you might add

. . . a chopped up apple, especially a green one, chopped dill or sweet pickle or cucumber.

Time for the dressing

Lot’s of choices here. The quick and dirty (and delicious) first choice is to dollop in some GOOD, REAL mayonnaise. How much? Well, you don’t want it swimming in it and you don’t want it dry. Again, use your judgment. You can’t start to trust it until you exercise it. Add some salt and pepper (that will be a whole blog entry by itself but I’m in a hurry tonight). Toss it all together and serve on a lettuce leaf or eat it out of the bowl with a fork.

I’m starting a theme here and it is always and foremost EAT REAL FOOD.