Love. Food. Cook.

As of this moment I am “sans camera” and it is an embarrassing story.

Back in March, Chris and I took a vacation to Mexico where I haphazardly emptied out the sand in my beach bag over the balcony of our hotel room. Out flew my little Nikon Coolpix from the second floor and there it landed on the concrete garden path, bouncing around a few times. There are some grumpy “test” pictures of me after that since Chris was trying to see if the darn thing was still working. The camera was cracked all over but the capture ability still worked. Nice.  The embarrassing part of it all was that (a) it was pretty new and (b) every time someone asks what happened to it, Chris pauses briefly and says, “oh, it got dropped”.

Yeah, it got “dropped” all right. The word “flung” is even more accurate.

While I am looking for a new camera I have also been “sans blogging” for a while now because I can’t bring myself to cook something and not have anything to show for it. Everyone needs a picture!

As I’m changing my blog over this week to WordPress I came across a set of recipe pictures that were probably from several months ago but very fitting for the Spring season. In the past, I’ve tried different versions of this salad but they were usually made with all mayonnaise. Since I’m not a huge fan of using lots of mayonnaise in my salad dressings, this spin-off recipe was a welcomed alternative after I discovered it  from the Beachbody 10 Minute Trainer program I’ve been following.  Thanks to their handy food plan, my creativity has become unlimited!  Take care, though, in applying the salad dressing to your waldorf mix. I prefer my salads to be lightly coated. In this recipe I found I made too much dressing and ended up using less than what is prescribed below. No worries though, if you have left over dressing then use it for another redux, or mix it with some crushed garlic, chopped onions and cayenne pepper for a spicy ranch dressing that’s actually acceptable in the healthy food realm.

Waldorf Salad
Yields 4 servings.

½ cup of almond slivers
4 stalks of celery, diced
2 Ya pears, diced (use any other pear or apple if you cannot find any Ya pears)
4 scallions, finely sliced
¼ cup of raisins
3 cups ham, diced into ¼ inch cubes
8 cups spinach, washed

Salad Dressing
½ cup of low fat or fat free plain yogurt
½ cup of light or fat free mayonnaise
Juice of ½ a lemon
Salt
Pepper

Toast the almonds in a skillet over high heat (watch it closely or you will burn them horribly!) and set aside to cool.

In another skillet, brown the ham over high heat. Once the edges are brown, turn the heat down to medium and continue to toss for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a bowl, gently toss the almonds, celery, pears, raisins, scallions, ham and dressing.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Divide the spinach equally into bowls. Spoon equal amounts of the celery mixture on top of the spinach and serve.

Although this recipe was intended to be a full meal of salad it is easy to reduce the serving size and make this a starter or side dish. Might I suggest lettuce wraps?