The "Spare"itarian

The family and I just finished our one month experiment of “mom cooks no meat” (meat defined here is beef, pork or poultry; we ate plenty of fish and eggs). And it was a great success. Mr. Handsome  claims he didn’t even notice I wasn’t cooking meat, he liked our meals so much. Cooking is creative and fun for me, so the added time in the kitchen wasn’t painful. In the beginning, I relied heavily on Taste is Trump for inspiration and incorporated lots and lots of grains in places where I would typically have used just meat. By the end of the month, I let my imagination run loose and made up some keeper recipes. I'll start with your salad and hopefully before to long I'll post some recipes for a main course. Enjoy!

Spinach, Pomegranate and Goat Cheese Salad with Lime Dressing

Ohhh, the flavors in this dish are soooooo tantalizing on the tongue. Bursts of lime zest zing and zap and that pungent goat cheese melts into a smooth sweetness. I love* this one, especially the goat cheese**. I made it up with whatever ingredients we had on hand, so feel free to improvise:

Spinach
Red grapes, sliced in half
Pomegranate seeds
Avocado cubes
Goat cheese crumbles
Lime zest (no skimping on the lime zest! It makes the salad)

Lime and Coconut oil Salad Dressing

I experimented with coconut oil since many people are touting it as a healthy saturated fat. The jury is still out on that for me but it does have a lovely creaminess to it. Use olive oil if you don’t do coconut. I only made a wee bit of dressing as I knew just my sweetie and I would be trying it. About two tablespoons of each main ingredient worked well for us. Use equal parts of: Coconut oil, lime juice and sweetener (honey, sugar or agave syrup whatever you sweeten things with. We used a bit of sugar and agave.). Add a pinch of salt and pepper.

*If I were a child and said “I love this salad,” and another little kid responded with a sassy “then why don’t you marry it,” I would retort to that with the requisite evil eye and how dare you stare. But internally, deep down in the recesses of my heart, I would know that if I had to stay with one salad for the rest of my life, this one would be a contender.

* * I remember the first time I tried goat cheese. I was 17 and a senior in high school; the foodie movement was just budding and I was on board. I made homemade vanilla ice cream with an actual vanilla bean. Poached pears for my own pear mint sorbet. I was into trying “unusual” ingredients and I especially loved cheeses. The more foreign the better. One afternoon I stumbled upon a package of goats cheese new and unopened in my fridge. What serendipity! Something new to try! The package of cheese in the fridge had a goats head on it done in a black charcoal pencil medium and I thought he looked very strong and proud. I pulled that cheese out and slapped a piece on a cracker, anxious to find out what the goats had to offer. The instant I tasted it I knew: The goats need to go back to the barn yard. Their reputation for eating garbage was resulting in nastiness! How dare they mar my love of cheese with something so rank! That goat’s head picture now looked positively devilish. We parted ways for at least 15 years. But then as an adult I found myself eating in a salad, and not wishing to offend anyone, continued eating the pungent substance until I determined it has a sweet, creamy aftertaste that I began to crave in regular intervals. If you ask me if I liked goats cheese today I will admit that for lunch I just ate a hunk of it in a bowl with a spoon. (Actually, I didn’t do that, but I did think about it and it would have tasted delicious, I’m sure. I did eat some in my salad.) If you don’t like goats cheese, use feta instead.