Fit Fare

By Ralph and Patti Villers.  We have been on a kick making salads lately. Not your typical leafy green salad, but one made from ordinary and prosaic items, such as grains that we often keep in the pantry. Given the current (high) price of gasoline recently, we employed a ‘raid the pantry only’ strategy. Happily, this strategy works well in this inflationary era. However, does scrimping affect taste? Is there a dichotomy between taste and cost that are … unpalatable? Not this time, and by keeping the pantry filled with the right items, probably never.

Since we made a barley salad recently, a rice salad was our choice. As the weather warms, we are going to try more salads of this type made from other grains, such as barley.

This particular recipe was adapted from the website http://www.chefs.com. We changed from the recommended vinegar to rice from red wine. We chose the milder rice as the soy sauce and raw onion added the requisite sharpness to our favored rice vinegar. Likewise, I omitted the cranberry raisins and sunflower seeds as our cupboard was empty of these items, although the addition of these two will further enhance this salad.

Because we made this salad with ingredients and condiments on hand, the choice of the Texas grown Jasmati rice was an easy – that is what we had in our pantry. Brown rice can be substituted, and might be preferred due to its having more fiber, and we will try this the next time.

6 oz. cooked Jasmati rice
6 scallions, finely chopped
1 red bell pepper-raw, cored, seeded and diced
1 carrot, large, diced
3 Tbsp. parsley, chopped
2 oz. dark raisins
2 oz. dry roasted peanuts, lightly salted

For the dressing:

1/2 cup canola oil
2 Tbsp. honey
3 Tbsp. soy sauce
3 Tbsp. rice wine vinegar

Instructions

• Cook and place the cooked rice in a bowl
• Place oil, honey, soy sauce and vinegar in a bowl and whisk well
• Pour dressing over warm rice and toss with remaining ingredients
• Chill before serving

An individual serving has about 390 calories from a total of 1950