On this episode of “Refrigerator Roulette…” Great game. One of my favourites actually. Have you ever played it? You don’t know what it is? Sure you do. It’s when you have so many leftovers in the fridge you feel like you are living the movie “Groundhog Day” over and over and over and every time you open the door it’s like spinning a big wheel with your eyes waiting to see what scraps of dinner they will land on.
When I first started reading about this “Paleo Diet” thing the common theme I kept coming across was that to be successful at making a monumental shift in your diet you had to “prepare” in advance or cook more than you were going to eat at one time. I struggled with this, at first but now I’ve almost swung to the other end of the spectrum. Seriously. I’m only cooking for me and my husband 95% of the time but I might as well be running a B & B over here with accommodations for 8 with the amount of food I cook on any given day.
Now, it may seem like I am setting myself up for nothing more than a lot of “perfectly good food” heading for the compost pail but that’s not the case at all. Instead, I come up with something like this thing of beauty. I literally threw this together the other day. I was working at home (I have a great corporate gig that allows me to work remotely a lot of the time) and around 11:30 a.m. my stomach started to growl (side note: I don’t usually eat breakfast and typically wait to eat until my body sends out an SOS of sorts). Before I even set foot in the kitchen I had already started a conducting a mental inventory of what I had on hand in the kitchen: leftover Dijon Glazed pork tenderloin , salad greens, Clementines. Then I started thinking about this amazing kale salad I had for lunch at a restaurant a couple of weeks ago that had pickled red onions. Yum. At this point I was starting to feel like a contestant on that TV show “Chopped”. You know, the one where they give people a mystery basket of ingredients that they have to incorporate into a dish. A quick consult with “OK, Google” confirmed that it was possible to pickle an onion in 30 minutes. Yes! I bolted down the stairs and went to work. Can I just say that pickling onions is a game changer. G-A-M-E C-H-A-N-G-E-R! I put that $hit on everything.
Once I had the pickles, pickling all that was left to do was make a dressing to compliment this little masterpiece. My go to vinaigrette was not going to cut it this time so I had to come up with something new, exciting, never done before. When I came back to reality and realized that that was a near impossibility I came up with a simple citrusy dressing.
By the time I put this all together and set up the shot I began to wonder what if this doesn’t taste as awesome as it looked? And, honestly, I was prepared to dump the whole thing in the compost, forget the whole thing happened and start all over again. Luckily that was not the case and I can say with complete and utter honesty that this was fabulous!
So the next time you are having people over for dinner and want to impress them with your mad kitchen skills, start with this salad. Do it! After they tell you how delicious it was you can tell it’s “nutritious AND delicious.
You can find the recipe for the Dijon Glazed Pork Tenderloin in the link above or in the Recipe section of this site. The pickled onions are courtesy of The Kitchn and you can find that recipe here. I left out the juniper berries and the sugar.
For the Orange Vinaigrette:
- 1/4 c. Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- 3 T. pure orange juice
- 2 T. Red Wine Vinegar
- 1/2 t. Dijon Mustard
- Salt and pepper to taste
INSTRUCTIONS
- Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Use an immersion blender to whir it altogether. You can also take this opportunity to work on a little bicep and tricep development and use a wire whisk to mix it up.
- Pour over greens and toss to coat evenly.
- Add sliced pork tenderloin, clementines and pickled onions.
- Serve and enjoy.
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