When I originally thought of the title to this post, it was because I was sampling various things around my kitchen… but then I heard the song by Santana, “Game of Love” when I was in a store and now that is in my head…
Oh well, it happens… do you have the song in your head now too? Heehee
Ok… so I was intending to make lasagna… I bought spinach, mushrooms, lots of sockarooni, and noodles… but for some reason, I kept avoiding the kitchen. So when 5 o’clock rolled around I told my taste-tester it was too late to start the lasagna, we’d have something easy that night. This went on for over a week. What was going on? Sure, I hate doing dishes, but I love Italian food… so why wasn’t I stoked to make lasagna?
I don’t know… so I decided to try a new tactic… I decided to ask myself “what was I craving?” I looked around the pantry and the wild rice spoke to me… the rest, as you will soon see in pictures, just happened organically… These meals happened over the course of several days…
Let the slide show begin… (click to enlarge smaller pictures)…
Dinner
It all started with wild rice… then I thought of red beans, and then sauteed veggies… at the last minute I decided to put it all on a bed of spinach. I made the wild rice with vegetable broth (water + better than bouillon vegetable base). The sauteed veggies (onion, garlic, green pepper, and mushrooms) were seasoned with salt, pepper and thyme.
Lunch
The next day I had a craving for spinach salad with cranberries… only this time I decided to also add carrots, chickpeas, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, and sunflower seeds… topped with balsamic vinaigrette. 1
Dinner
My creativity was quite stoked now, I decided to make a taco salad of sorts using leftovers (sauteed veggies, red beans, wild rice), guacamole, romaine lettuce, black olives, seedless cucumbers, green onions, celery, red pepper, and tomatoes. I seasoned the red beans with salt, pepper, chili powder, cumin, and coriander. Then served it with Red Hot Blues chips.
All three salads turned out amazing! I guess I just wasn’t in the mood for heavy food… maybe I’ll make lasagna sometime in the future… right now, though, I’m totally digging the salads!
Until next time…
~nic
1 contains honey
The Auspicious Squirrel 
I definitely need to start doing that and see what my body actually wants. Too many times I will make something b/c I have the stuff but really don’t have a taste for it and aren’t satisfied after eating it.
I like the taco salad, it’s so colorful and pretty! Chips on the side never hurt either…