27 Live is an Evanston music and events venue whose restaurant has had several lives in the recent past. I wrote about it last March when my wife and I enjoyed a meal there. It went through some menu changes (and some neighbors told me the food went a bit downhill).
My octopus with artichoke.
But now it’s reopened its restaurant companion as a Greek place, Kefi Greek Tavern. We went to check it out and found some dishes we enjoyed.
The menu offers both small plate and large plate choices. We were in a bit fo a rush because we had play tickets the night we went, so our server advised us not to order some large plate options we wanted because they took 20 minutes to cook. So we instead made our meal out fo small plate offerings and we happy with the choices we made. Continue reading “27 Live goes Greek — Oompa!”→
Now that I work at home, I buy large boxes of spring greens at Costco and make my own salad at least three days a week, sometimes more. So I’m always looking for low-fat, low-sodium, low-sugar items to add. I regularly put on slices of portobello mushrooms, tomatoes, reduced-sodium olives and fat-free feta cheese. And I’ve gotten in the habit of cooking more protein than we’ll eat at a given dinner so I have some leftover salmon, chicken or ground turkey to add to my salad the next day as well.Look for no-salt-added beets to add to your salads.
One item I routinely added at salad bars was slices of beets. But when I went to buy them at a supermarket I found salt hidden inside, 250 mgs per serving to be exact. I didn’t want all that salt from something so innocuous, so I’d given up on beets until recently. That’s when I found a sodium-free beets alternative at my local supermarket. Continue reading “Salt-free beets, a good choice for your do-it-yourself salad”→
Fennel is one of my favorite snacks and side dishes and it’s working its way into mainstream cooking more and more these days. It’s like a lot of Italian dishes from my youth that once were ethnic-only foods and now are being more widely recognized (can you say lentil soup or squid, two other similar examples).
A wonderfully simple shrimp, fennel and cucumber salad
Cooking seems all the harder in the summer when the world heats up around you (if you live in a northern climate as I do. If you live in the South, it’s always hot, so this post is for you year-round). So rather than do a lot of summer cooking, how about a night or two of cold salads, with some edamame pasta thrown in as the cooked center of your plate?
Some fun, and easy-to-make summer salads. And some edamame pasta.
Grilling is a summer favorite. I’ve done grilled vegetables like zucchini for parties and for our consumption over the years. But I never thought of grilling a salad until I saw this in Bon Apetit recently.
Grilled vegetables can work well on a salad too, try them.
I would modify this recipe. Take out the salt, of course. I’d also eliminate the avocado and the pistachios because I don’t like either. If you do, keep them. I’d substitute in some grilled asparagus and grilled portobello mushrooms along with grilled zucchini too.
The 12 days of Christmas are speeding by and, at this point, you likely have had your fill of big meals. So why not something light for dinner tonight, like a salad topped with something left over from one of your earlier feasts?
My wonderful salmon salad.
My Saturday suggestion is a salmon salad, a big bowl of spring greens and tomatoes topped off by a piece of salmon that may be left over from your Christmas Eve fish feast. A tilapia fillet also would work as a topping as would chunks of leftover crab or lobster you also may have eaten Christmas Eve.
Today is a day to relax, enjoy the blessing in your life, and have a low-salt, low-fat, low-sugar diner treat.
Mall of America outside Minneapolis is truly the mother-ship of all enclosed shopping malls in the United States. Large enough to have an amusement park inside it, it dwarfs any similar structures.The open kitchen at Crave…most of the orders coming up were burgers.
But finding low-sodium, low-fat lunch foods there is a daunting task, much as was finding healthy foods at Orlando’s Universal or Disney World.
We bypassed the usual fast food options and high-salt locations like Bubba Gump Shrimp to try a restaurant that billed itself as “fresh, vibrant American.”
Seattle is the salmon capital of the continental United States (Alaska does a pretty good job of it as well) but even knowing Seattle’s salmon reputation, I wasn’t prepared to find salmon sold at the Seattle Mariners’ ballpark, Safeco Field.
Salmon salad was a great surprise at Safeco Field in Seattle. Bring your own oil and vinegar packets so you can spike the high-fat dressing.
But that’s where I found it, specifically atop a salad. Ballparks are where we eat hot dogs, but hot dogs have been off my menu since my angioplasty two years ago. That makes going to a baseball game much less fun for me than it once was. I usually can scrounge up a chicken breast sandwich now. Continue reading “Safeco Field offers salmon salad…gotta love it”→
Millennium Park has become the second most popular tourist attraction in Chicago, drawing millions of people every year to see the Bean and other sights. But as a recent Chicago Tribune article on the park notes, there are few food options inside the park. But several salad bar choices do exist within short walks of the popular outdoor venue.
My office is across the street from the park on Randolph and Michigan Avenue, so I’ve explored the salad options in the area. The best choice, and the cheapest per pound, is at the Mariano’s supermarket a few blocks north of the park. Just walk up Randolph Street toward the lake, past the sign that says no access to the lakefront, and keep walking until you see the sign to turn for Mariano’s on the north side of the street.
The store itself is tucked away behind high rises in the area. But it’s worth the hunt for it. The salad bar has a choice of container sizes into which you can put romaine lettuce, spring greens, fresh spinach and the popular kale. Accompaniments include the usual such as beets and mushroom slices. Several prepared salads also are present, but they all have too much salt for my restricted diet, so I avoid them.A typical selection at a Mariano’s salad bar
I also avoid the hot food bar, but you may find something on that you can eat without getting too much salt, fat or sugar, let me know if you do.
