Then, one summer evening, when I was 18 or so, I came over to a friend’s before going out clubbing, and she had planned salad for dinner. Her own style though. She’d just plated us both some shredded lettuce, some mini balls of mozzarella, some carrot sticks and possibly some grape tomatoes. And she had a bottle of mayo and ketchup set out. Yes, I know, that’s not a salad, but it was to me – to us. She didn’t know I didn’t eat salads, and she figured it was a summery dish, so why not. That’s just the way she did salad. For no particular reason. She apparently didn’t like real salads all that much either, so she came up with that, as she did like iceberg lettuce, carrot sticks and mozzarella.

I guess it must’ve been the dressings that threw us off.

Anyhow, my friend, that day turned me on to salads. From that moment on I LOVED ‘salad’, I would bring it to school with me, just shredded lettuce, mini-mozarella and I ‘dressed’ it with sour cream. On an adventurous day, I might’ve added some croutons.

And this evolved. As soon as I quit being a vegetarian, I started putting little pieces of grilled chicken in there. I discovered more veggies that I liked raw. I discovered that pine nuts were completely acceptable in salads, so I added those. And in no time, I actually, voluntarily started eating salads. I still didn’t do the dressings though. No way!

At some point I discovered putting just so9me olive oil on my salad. I’d probably ran out of sour cream, or something, and tried that instead. I guess it tasted allright as that evolved into adding flavored oils, and even vinaigrettes. Slowly but surely I got into dressings. The difference was, now I got to decide what was in there. I just made something up and went with it. It even went as far as me buying dressings I knew I liked (As I’d made them myself before) in the store. I quickly came back from that though, because price and tastewise making them myself was way better. And it didn’t take all that long to whip up some honey mustard dressing, or a vinaigrette.

I started experimenting with my salads. Taco salads that look horrible, but taste marvelous. Salads with chicken and avocado, salads with all kinds of stuff left in the fridge. Cheese, meat, veggies, everything that could be eaten cold or luke-warm and/or wouldn’t get worse (but might get better) with a good dressing, would inevitably end up in a salad at some point.

Yes, I love salads now. I’ve grown into them. Completely! (A former co-worker of mine always used to look at my eating habits with much interest, and delight. Her daughter was as picky an eater as I was at her age, and my co-worker had always worried about that for the 16 years before she met me. After we met, she suddenly didn’t feel as bad anymore, and just let her be picky. You’ll be glad to hear that her daughter is now 22 and eats all kinds of stuff, just like me!)

Back to salads, and dressings. Even though they’re insanely versatile and always tasty, at some point I do start to get bored with them and want to do something more, change something up a bit. So in came the tortilla bowls. I hadn’t ever made those beofre, so I figured I’d give them I try. They turned out to be way easy to make and tasty to boot!

How to make ‘em:
All you have to do is place a tortilla in an oven safe bowl, make sure it’s pressed down on the bottom so you’ll get a flat part which it will sit on. I used some baking beans (whick I’d usually use for pie crust) to keep them down. Place them in a fairly hot oven (175 C / 350 F or something like that) for about 10 minutes until they feel a little crispy and they have browned a bit. Remove the bowls from the oven, but leave the tortillas in there to cool off. Once they’ve cooled off, they’ll keep their shapes and you can use them for anythign not-too-soggy.

I filled my tortilla bowls with a spinach and smoked chiken salad. I warmed the smoked chicken in a pan with some olive oil, then added some sugar, fresh ground pepper, a pinch of pink himalayan salt and some white wine vinegar and let some of the spinach wilt a little in there. (I used wild spinach.) I removed the pan from the heat, and cracked an egg in the pan and stirred it ferouciously, somewhat similar to making carbonara. I removed the chicken and spinach (now coated in the dressing) from the pan and added that to the toritiaal bowls, together with some uncooked spinach, halved grape tomato’s and little slices of parmigiano.  I then returned the pan with the remaining dressing to the heat, to thicken it a bit more and drizzled the dressing over the bowls for a little extra kick.

I sincerely did not take any measurements, I just keep looking, tasting and know what I want. Maybe next time I make it, I’ll be so kind to measure it out!

This salad is so good and so versatile. I often fry up some bacon bits and leave the smoked chicken cold and out of the pan, then use a little less oil for the dressing, but keep the bacon fat. It makes a totally different salad. Also the parmigiano sometimes gets replaced by feta, or some other cheese, or croutons, or nothing at all. I usually serve it on plates, though now that I’ve made the tortilla bowls once and know how easy they are, I might actually do that more often.

All in all, it’s been quite a distance, from salad-hater to lover. All thanks to that one summer night when my friend refused to cook and just gave us lettuce!

After sleeping in pretty late this morning (I guess I needed the sleep!) I woke up with a growling tummy. It wanted food. Trying to come up with things to make, I quickly figured that everything was going to take at LEAST half an hour to make. Probably even longer as I much prefer yeasted breads and rolls. Browsing through the little remains in my fridge (Saturday or Sunday is usually ‘shopping-for-the-week-day’) I found some flour tortilla’s that were still nice and soft and some cream cheese.

When I still worked in an office far-far away from any bakers, grocers or cafe’s, I regularly brought my own lunch. The in-house-cafeteria wasn’t terribly, but it generally resulted in the same food every day. It inspired me to buy a bento box and combine my own meals a couple of times a week. Something that regularly appeared in my little bento box, was wraps. Basicaly leftover tortilla’s from the previous night’s meal with whatever I could find and wouldn’t go bad in the few hours before lunchtime rolled up and sliced. I actually inspired a lot of co-workers to make those for their own lunches or brunches.

So this morning, with a growling stomach, I saw the tortilla’s and remembered. There was still some cream cheese, I found some thin-sliced chicken that had it’s expiration day yesterday  (I once heard that by law they need to put an expiration date on things that’s at least 2 days before it’ll actually go bad). Sure enough breakfast, or brunch, was coming together. Some tomato, pepper and salt and a wonderful, simple dish was done. Then I recalled the pesto, desperately waiting to be used and figured that’d be great with the chicken and tomato, so I added a couple of dollops of that. And presto, food was ready. It tasted wonderful!

Brunch wraps

• Flour tortilla’s (1 per person)
• Cream cheese
• Pepper
• Salt
• Fish meat, chicken
• Vegetable(s)
• any condiment you like

Lay our 1 flour tortilla per person eating (or 1 per 2 people if you add this to a multi-dish lunch). Smear a thin layer of cream cheese over the entire tortilla. Add thin sliced chicken, meat or fish over the entire tortilla, maybe some regular or grated cheese too if you have it and it goes well with the rest of the dish. Add vegetables such as lettuce and/or tomato (or peppers or whatever you like) to 3 quarters of the tortilla (leave one strip on the side empty of that, for rolling and sticking purposes). Add some pepper, salt and condiments to taste. Roll up, starting at the side with vegetables, cut into 4 pieces (lay the seal on the bottom so it won’t open itself up) and serve.