Tossing the Salad
how does this keep happening
If you’re havin’ meal problems I feel bad for you, son
I got ninety-nine problems but a dish ain’t one
Oh shit it’s an extra-busy week in the summertime and you said you would “take care” of dinner tonight and now it’s time for dinner??
AGAIN??????
No worries! And no need to eat those slimily suspect takeout leftovers from two days ago, either! Today on my unauthorized zero-budget Food Network cooking channel, Lesbians Licking… the Spoon, we’re going to slap together a healthy (!!) and VERY GOOD dinner in less than five minutes using only the shit you already have at home.
Seriously!! I swear to god!! Without a single
"oh you don’t have that in your pantry? weird i just assumed everyone had 3/4 of a cup of shelled pistachios lying around”
ingredient!
LET’S DO THIS, no you are not going to the fucking store, every item on the ingredient list is basically interchangeable!
I give you… The Salad.
Hush up hush up, I know you know how to make a salad. This one is special. It takes almost no time, it is easy to memorize, and it is so fucking good that we eat a variation of this at least once a week from about April-October. This week we ate it twice! And that is very normal!
I have no idea where this salad came from because I don’t search for or follow recipes—The Salad just appeared, fully formed, at our house one day and it’s never left the rotation since and everybody (including guests nervous about me being in charge of dinner) always wants it again after they’ve tried it once! Which is good, because I fucking hate cooking, but this I can do!!
The Salad
Serves 2 extremely hungry people but can be doubled or tripled or whatever, but make sure to eat it all tonight because this doesn’t keep!
Equipment
1 enormous mixing bowl (this is vital, we’re talking the biggest bowl you have)
2 enormous bowls to eat out of (same here, when i tell you this serves 2 extremely hungry people i mean “do you have two other bowls that are roughly as deep as troughs?”
Ingredients
1 GREENS: a 5- or 6-oz-sized clamshell of greens for 2 people (or one of those big ones for 4 people) - It doesn’t matter what kind! mixed greens, arugula, spinach, anything except iceberg works here.
1 PROTEIN: a can of oil-packed tuna for every 2 people - Now, does water-packed tuna work here? Yes, but in this salad, the quality of the protein really shows, and oil-packed tuna tastes way better. BUT! can you use shredded rotisserie chicken, smoked salmon, cubes of turkey, or crispy tofu? Of course you can!!! one time i used torn-up pieces of deli ham and it turned out fine, so
1 BEANS: a can of beans for every 2 people - whatever you have! seriously it couldn’t matter less. At our house, the preferred bean is cannellini, but we’ve eaten this with black beans, pinto beans, whatever the heck great northern beans are, navy beans, and kidney beans, and it’s perfect every time.
A CHEESE: a sharp hard cheese, shredded - The best and most delicious way to do this is to take your big hunk of costco Pecorino Romano and use your carrot peeler to peel off generous, satisfying curls of gorgeously salty sheep cheese, but you bet your ass you can use parmesan, feta, or even sharp cheddar, as long as the cheese you’re using has a discernible taste. Pecorino and parm are your best bets, though.
this guy SOMETHING PICKLED OR BRINY: Pickled red onions are the platonic ideal for this salad, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ who cares, i mean kalamata olives or a small amount of capers or even giardiniera works here… in a pickle😏
*Optional*: ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANT IN HERE - Little cut-in-half cherry tomatoes, cucumber slices, teeny sunflower seeds, none of these are necessary and there is no need to get fancy, this salad is great without any additions and no one is spending more than five mins on this, that’s the only rule!
OLIVE OIL - this is the main dressing, however much you want
A FEW DASHES OF SOME KIND OF SOUR OR VINEGARY LIQUID - the juice of half a lemon! balsamic vinegar of any color!
Salt and pepper - of course!
Instructions
Drain the tuna and the beans.
Dump the clamshell of greens into your enormous bowl. Did we wash it? Absolutely not, it says it’s triple-washed right there on the package!
Dump everything else in, shave your pecorino into the bowl, crack some salt and pepper on top, and toss your salad!
If you want to get cute, you can toast a piece of toast, butter it, sprinkle it with garlic salt, cut it diagonally in half, and tuck each triangle jauntily into the side of each bowl of The Salad. Don’t do it every time, though, or your loved ones will come to expect the toast-triangle, and we must keep expectations in hell where they belong.
Eat out of your trough-bowls in front of the TV without speaking, shoveling glistening forkfuls of salad into your mouth while your eyes never leave Elaine from Seinfeld as she buys a bra for a woman that she hates (because the woman never wears a bra and stole Elaine’s high school boyfriend with her jiggling breasts) to give to her as a rude birthday present.
Yell about how good this salad is, and then tilt the bottom of your enormous bowl into your mouth, using your fork to scrape all the bits towards you.
Complain about how full you are and discuss whether you’re watching another episode. (You are.) Oh, you don’t think you’ll be full from salad? Try eating half a can of beans with protein and enough roughage to satiate a horse and get back to me!!
DINNER IS SERVED YOU’RE A HERO GREAT JOB!!! Repeat so often you can put The Salad together in under 3 minutes and first-time guests think you can cook LMAOOOO🤙🤙🤙
okay but what about draining the olive oil from the tuna into the bowl?? reduce reuse recycle
I love the carrot peeler shaved Parmesan curls!