Elaine had her Big Salad.  I have my pink salad.  This will serve as my unintentional breast cancer awareness post.

Salad for the Cure

Occasionally, Stacey and I have a clean-out-the-fridge, salad dinner.  Its a good tradition.  We don’t really like to be wasteful and it serves as a time to make more room for new items in our refrigerator.  Also, we had a decent amount of lettuce in the garden that is getting a little bitter due to the heat.  “Getting a little bitter” might be an understatement.   Munching on a raw, unadulterated piece of our Butter Crunch lettuce tastes just this side of a wicked shot of Campari.

Nonetheless, we didn’t want to toss it out.  After perusing the fridge, I found some dried black mission figs that had been marinating in brandy and orange peel for a couple of months (a delicious recipe from the Zuni Cafe cookbook) that I thought would go wonderfully with the last bit of Rogue Creamery Bleu Cheese that I knew was hiding somewhere.  I also found some shallots and an avocado, along with a couple of cooked chicken breasts from earlier in the week.  We had the makings of a good, simple but tasty salad.

The problems began when I found the bleu cheese…ahem, the green, fuzzy, mold-covered bleu cheese.  I ended up with a great aged Gouda instead, but I really had my heart set on the bleu cheese with those figs.  I sliced the shallots and the avocado, threw in the chicken, and some croutons from Central Market.  I squeezed a couple of lemons into a small bowl and slowly drizzled in the olive oil.  To add a little sweetness, I remembered that I had some reduced prickly pear syrup and thought the bright magenta color would add at least some visual appeal to a somewhat mundane salad.

Upon adding the dressing, my snow white chicken turned the most horrifying shade of neon pink that one could imagine.  It makes total sense, but I hadn’t thought that far ahead—I was shooting from the hip with this salad.  Care for a closer look?

Oh yeah...its pink.

Stacey got a great laugh out of the whole event and snatched up my camera for a quick picture, noticing that the chicken matched my shirt perfectly.

Pink...Like my shirt, obviously

You win some, you lose some.  What are ya gonna do?