I gave a talk Saturday about ways to incorporate more local foods and greens into your diet. One of the recipes I demo'd was a salad with my 30-second salad dressing. I told participants that a salad spinner is a great idea. When your lettuce is dry, the salad dressing adheres better so you need less of it. (Another tip for using less dressing is to toss your salad in a bowl with the dressing. When you put salad on your plate and add teh dressing there, you'll use much more.)
I also love that my spinner came with a cover. When I get my head of lettuce home from the farmers' market, I tear off the leaves, soak and wash the whole head and spin in the spinner. Then I replace the spinner part with a cover and I have clean, ready-to-use lettuce all week. It's much cheaper and much healthier than the bagged lettuce sold in stores which has been found to contain high levels of bacteria.
One of the attendees gave me a couple of other uses for salad spinners so I thought I'd share.
- If you put too much dressing on your salad, put it in the spinner and spin off the excess.
- When you hand wash items, spin them in your spinner before you lay them out to dry. She says she has an old one exclusively for this--I'm going to check the thrift store when I go. I think this would be great to dry bathing suits too. Would I look weird carrying a salad spinner to the high school pool?
So how about you--any salad spinner tips you want to share?
2 comments:
I'm not sure if this qualifies as a salad spinner tip or an anti-salad spinner tip -- I picked up, from the mother of a dear college friend, the habit of using a pillowcase, putting the washed greens in it, and taking it outside and spinning it around over your head. :D In fact, I have gorgeous purple/dyed pillowcase (made with fabric my aunt brought back from Peace Corps in Liberia) that is saved for that very function (it's too short for most pillows anyway).
Next time you are having a hard day, picture me doing this on my front step. :)
Actually I've heard about that ... or at least I saw it once in a foreign movie. Yes--that is a good image that will make me smile thinking of you.
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