Lunch one day last week.  With beans in lieu of eggs for those with allergies.

I like for the majority of the salads that I make to stand on their own, without dressing.  Also for them to be protein rich, a little fatty and filling.  And no I don’t worry about all of that fat in the least, to be perfectly honest.  Out of curiosity a couple of months ago I joined an online program where you could record your food intake in great detail and get the nutritional breakdown.  It gave you a set calorie goal.  You could set it for weight loss, gain or maintenance.  And even with it set so that I should supposedly be loosing 2 lbs a week, I could never even come close to the goal.  Without changing my eating habits at all and while being scrupulously accurate about what I was consuming, most days were around half the calories I was supposed to be consuming.  It’s eating low in sugars and carbs that makes the difference.  I don’t believe fat to be the demon that others think it is.  So, if I feel like, say, cooking my veggies in bacon grease to give them a rich flavor, I don’t think twice about it.  And I’m perfectly comfortable with that.

But back to the salad…I was actually really craving fat that day.  Something about the dark and damp and cold of winter, it seemed like just what I needed.  And eggs.  We don’t have them often, but from time to time, I really like some.  I remembered when I was little, my mother would sometimes make a different sort of egg-salad, mashing the hard boiled eggs with butter instead of the typical mayo concoction.  hmmm….

First I filled bowls with baby spinach.  I’m loving baby spinach right now.  Next I chopped up a whole bunch of leeks and sauteed them (yes, in a bit of bacon grease, it’s true!).  And generously layered that atop the spinach (all the kids deemed this their favorite part).  Then we topped the whole thing with hard-boiled eggs, mashed with salt, pepper and a bit of ghee.  While we don’t do well with dairy, everyone in the house seems to tolerate my home-made clarified butter fairly well.

The meal ended with everyone begging me to make it again soon.  The flavor combination was just right.  So nice when you can call a salad a treat!