Monbento Square #38 (Double Tier)

 

I promised more pinwheels, and I fulfilled my promise to myself with gusto! This is a spinach-pineapple salad with candied pecans and non-dairy feta with some homemade white wine vinaigrette in the little cup, inspired by this omnivore recipe, a lemony mushroom and cucumber salad inspired by this recipe, and carrot lox and spinach pinwheels with cream cheese, onions, scallions, and capers.

Essentially, I suppose, I wanted to eat all the vegetables. It happens sometimes. It was lighter on protein than I usually want at lunch, but both breakfast and dinner made up for it so I got to have lots of veggies at lunch without it backfiring on me. 

I really liked this pineapple salad! I think the basic lesson I'm absorbing about convincing myself to eat green leafy things is that I mostly want them to be sweet in some way, preferably with something crunchy and something salty to round it out. But pineapple is an unusual fruit to include in a spinach salad, so I was intrigued. I'm glad I made it. I think the dressing I made needs work, but the salad itself was great.

I didn't have parsley for the mushroom and cucumber salad so I improvised with chopped arugula. I think that worked out fine, but I really should have put more salt on this salad. A lesson for next time.

Carrot lox pinwheels are really good; I probably should give a formal recipe sometime. I did give a recipe for carrot lox about five years ago and it remains one of my most popular blog posts in spite of the less-than-stellar photography; I plan to do a separate post on that sometime soon to highlight the smoky goodness. What I did to make pinwheels was to mix Miyoko's cream cheese with a little vegan mayo, finely chopped red onion, scallions, and capers to make a spread for my tortilla. Then, I topped the tortilla with the spread, spinach, and carrot lox, rolled it all up, and sliced it.

As I ate this in my car, sleet was coming down, so it wasn't my best pairing for a picnic--on colder days it's better to have soup or something--but regret is useless at this juncture. And maybe spring will really come sometime, and I can eat my salads and be warm.