Salad Days

Yesterday, our internet was out for several hours, so after wandering the house aimlessly for a while, I decided to do some cooking! Hooray! I had a giant cucumber that I wanted to do something with, so I decided to make a cucumber salad. I also wanted to recreate a salad I am obsessed with at Metropolis, so I double saladed at the same time, one Greek and one Japanese.

The first step in cooking is always pour yourself a drink. I enjoyed a Schlafly's Citrus Witbier. I swear, I took a photo of this beer when it was full, but I can't find it, so this will have to do.

The way I cook is that I look at a bunch of recipes online, and then I mix them up to accomodate the things that I have in my kitchen and how easy they are. I rarely use one whole recipe (except when baking), so I was all over the place with these.

Greek:
I started by chopping up some of the cucumber, and some kalamata olives in half. This is a quinoa salad, and I love quinoa, but I only had a half cup left. It turned out to be a good amount.

Japanese:
One of the recipes for cucumber salad that I saw said to peel the cuke in alternating stripes. I was like "What? This is a step? LAME." and then later ended up doing it. It was fun.

Ooh, blurry photos, folks. Sorry about that.

The next step was to cut in half and scoop the seeds out. I like to use a grapefruit spoon for my seed-scooping needs, cause it has the little scrapey end of the spoon.

Then chop into thin slices!

Fuzzy and I once took a knife skills class, and I was so bad at it, Fuzzy was nervous for me (the fact I was pounding wine that night didn't help). Whenever Fz sees me chopping things in the kitchen, he's like "Soft claw! Soft Claw!" Look at me now, world!!

Greek!
The quinoa is done!

I let it cool for a bit.

How's that beer doing?

Japanese:
I thin sliced about a half of an onion, and added about a tablespoon or 2 of roasted sesame seeds.

Next came the vinaigrette!
All the recipes called for rice vinegar, but I didn't have any. I used red wine vinegar instead, about 2 tablespoons (plus a little more), 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, a teaspoon of sesame oil, a half teaspoon of sugar, and some salt and pepper.

Voila!

Done! Delish!

Back to Greece!
I added the cooled quinoa to the cukes and olives.

Check out my spoon! It's a smiley face!

He looks like he has teeth!

I then added a lot of feta, like a half container maybe?

The salad at Metropolis has dill in it, but we didn't have any dill. So I used fresh fennel greens! It looks the same.

Then I added a bit of salt and pepper (though it didn't need salt--the olives and feta were salty enough).

Done! IT IS SO GOOD! Fuzzy and I ate most of it right then and there.

How did that beer hold up?

SUCCESS!