Powell - Beautiful Salads Delicious Organic Salads and Dressings for Every Season

Delicious Organic Salads & Dressings for Every Season

Pam Powell

The Salad Girl

MY SALAD DAYS began when I was a teenager, working as a dishwasher at Maddens Pine Beach Lodge & Resort in Brainerd, Minnesota, during the summer. From a busy kitchen, in a restaurant in a part of the resort called Lumber Town U.S.A., came family-style Minnesota walleye and farmhouse-baked chicken dinners with all the fixings.

I was busy, but during my breaks between lunch and dinner I was able to assist the kitchens salad girl with her chores: preparing all the fresh vegetables for the relish trays, peeling and crinkle-cutting the carrots, peeling potatoes for mashing, and preparing greens for the salads and cabbage for the homemade slaw. I found that I had a real knack for fresh food preparation, and I really loved eating the raw, fresh vegetables that were being delivered directly from the local farms. Then, the happy day came when I was promoted from dishwasher to salad girl. This was the beginning of a lifetime passion for preparing fresh, unique, and creative salads.

I learned every part of the food industry at Maddensfrom dishwashing and food prep to waitressing and bartending. With these skills in my apron pocket, I was able to get a job at any restaurant to help put myself through art school. It wasnt until the late 1970s, when I got a job at a hip little vegetarian restaurant called Caf Kardamena, that I understood the important link between eating well and good health. Caf Kardamena, located in the historic Summit Hill area of St. Paul, was owned by Brenda Langton, a beautiful, twenty-something visionary who was dedicated to spreading the good news about the importance of eating right by sharing flavorful whole-foods dishes with her customers. Brenda combined fresh, raw foods and simple, real ingredients to achieve amazing flavor combinations. Brenda was also one of the first local female chefs to create lasting and mutually beneficial relationships with the local farmers and fisheries that supplied food to her restaurant.

Working with Brenda shaped my belief that cooking and eating organic whole foods that are produced without the use of synthetic fertilizers, artificial pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, growth hormones, feed additives, or genetically modified organisms not only makes us healthy and happy, but it also keeps our planet healthy.

After art school, I became a freelance artist with a full-time job as a private chef in a household in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. Our son, Nick, was just a toddler, and my husband, Jim, was almost done with college when we decided to start a little weekend catering business for extra money. My favorite part of planning the catering menus was designing a recipe for an organic, seasonal salad. At times, I would design the whole menu around the salad! My clients loved my organic salad dressings so much that they started to special-order them to give to family and friends as gifts throughout the year.

In spring 2006, the owner of Kowalskis Markets, a local grocery store chain, tasted my dressings and invited me to put them on the refrigerated shelves of all eight of the companys stores. This meant that I needed to increase the volume of my manufacturing capacity to meet the demands of produce department orders, obtain organic certification for each flavor, and create a safe shelf life without impacting the fresh flavors of the dressings. I like a challenge, and this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me to make a dream come true, so with a lot of support, love, and elbow grease from my family and friends, I decided to take the leap of faith, and that spring, Salad Girl Inc. was born. We began to sell our unique salad dressings made with all organic ingredients at the Mill City Farmers Market (founded by Brenda Langton, chef/owner of Caf Kardamena, Caf Brenda, and Spoonriver Restaurant), located next to the famous Guthrie Theater on the banks of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.

Every week we worked in the evenings after our day jobs to bottle about 100 bottles of Salad Girl Organic Dressings, and each weekend we sold them all at the market. Our maximum bottling capacity was about 200 bottles, and we could never make enough to satisfy demand. Soon we outgrew the two commercial kitchens we had rented and were blessed to find a certified organic co-packing facility in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. These folks were so kind to lend our little local company a helping hand, and because of their help, we were able to make enough dressing to fill our first big order for Kowalskis in March 2007.

We put our first four varieties of certified organic Fresh Dressings for Fresh Greens on the refrigerated shelves of the eight stores by Easter that year. We started with our farmers market bestsellers: Crisp Apple Maple, Curry and Fig, Pomegranate Pear, and Blueberry Basil. Now Salad Girl Inc. creates and manufactures eleven fresh garden-inspired flavors of certified organic salad dressings that can be found on the refrigerated shelves of the produce department in many Whole Foods Markets, specialty food markets, co-ops, and natural foods stores throughout the country. (Go to www.saladgirl.com for more information on where to find Salad Girl Organic Dressings or to purchase online.)

Throughout the book, you will find that I have used artisan cheeses crafted in the United States and sustainable U.S. seafoods. I have also included a number of tips that focus on shopping for and keeping fresh sustainable salad ingredients. I hope you find these ideas for healthier eating and a healthier environment helpful.

I am so happy to be able to share my recipes with you. I hope that as you craft these seasonal, artisan salads for your family and friends, you will feel the health, happiness, and joy I have experienced by creating them!

GREENS 101

A SALAD IS ONLY AS GOOD as the ingredients used to create it. Start by selecting greens that are packed with flavor. Fresh, organic dark leafy greens, such as the varieties described here, have more nutritional value per forkful than lighter-colored varieties like iceberg.

ARUGULA: Arugula, pronounced ah-ROO-guh-lah, is one of the first greens of spring. It has a very distinctive flavor of spicy pepper with a hint of nut. Arugula is a good source of antioxidants, vitamins A and C, potassium, and calcium. The leaves should be bright green and fresh looking. Arugula is also called rocket, roquette, rugula, and ruccola (also called garden rocket, rocket salad, Italian cress, Mediterranean rocket, wild rocket).

BABY BEET GREENS: The leafy greens of immature beets are edible, tasty, and very nutritious (also known as baby beet tops, beet tops, beet).

BUTTERHEAD LETTUCE: Succulent and sweet, butterhead lettuces have soft, pale green to yellow-green leaves that are small and round. The best-known varieties of butterhead lettuces include Bibb and Boston lettuce (also called butter lettuce).

CRESS: Cress is appreciated for its sharp flavor and attractive appearance for garnishes. Two major types of cresses include upland cress and watercress.