Be honest. Does your family like salad? Too often, green salads are a sad afterthought—what a girl on a first date is supposed to order when she’d really rather have the pork ribs. At home, I've often thoughtlessly thrown them together. But even in good restaurants, I’m surprised at how often “side salad” means I get the same old bagged greens, served past their prime and weighed down with an oily vinaigrette.

It’s a shame. Done right, salads can seize the limelight, not just hang back, ever the grumpy dieter’s consolation prize. But that's not all. They may seem slight and insubstantial, but leafy greens are loaded with nutrition. Lettuces deliver heaps of fibre, vitamins, minerals and powerful antioxidants. And that’s before you add in those lovely, colourful veggies. So I’ve been taking notes. Whenever I encounter a salad that has me craving seconds, I ask why. What makes this one special? Over time I’ve seen some commonalities emerge and figured out what works, at least for me.

My tips are not foolproof. Salad-resistant kids are always tough customers. But overall, I’ve found these steps will get people—even non-salad eaters—to eat way more salad. Whether I'm serving family or dinner guests, the rising salad consumption is so consistent, so noticeable, I have to smile to myself every time it happens. People pound the table (really) and say things like, “That salad is dynamite!” or “Is it OK if I have the rest of that?” or simply “Mmmmm.” If I wasn’t encouraging people to eat such wonderfully healthy stuff, it would be almost…unethical.

Curious? Here are my six easy steps to increased salad consumption. Give these a try. See what happens.

1. Homemade croutons
Nothing makes a salad quite as special as fresh homemade croutons—coincidentally also a great way to use up stale bread. I heat a pan, melt in a blob of real butter, then toss in my cubed bread and wait. I like to mix it up, to make a bold statement with a dark rye, or throw in an unexpected texture with herbed focaccia, crunchy pita strips, or heavenly sourdough. Once croutons are a near-perfect golden brown, I grate a bit of Parmesan Reggiano overtop and gently stir to give these yummy bite-sized pockets a decadent crunch.

2. Ditch the bag
It took me a while to realize I don’t like bagged salad greens all that much. So convenient and nicely packaged, I’ve bought them for years without a second thought. But for me convenience trumps taste and too often, the stuff gets slimy before I can use it. Ultimately, yes, fresh lettuce requires more work. But it also lasts longer in the fridge, costs less, and makes a salad sing. Buttery Boston, delicate read leaf, crisp Romaine, peppery Arugula—rinse, dry, and lavish an assortment of gorgeous greenery into your salad bowl.

3. Fresh ingredients
Soups forgive, but a salad is no place for wilted carrots, or aging spinach. When I place only the freshest ingredients in my salads, I have more appetite for them, and so do my guests.

4. Cheese
I love this part! In most of my salads, I wantonly crumble in bits of creamy cheese, whether a veined, assertive blue, some salty Feta, or a milder goat cheese. Later when I’m tossing my salad, I love the way the cheese distributes, leaving traces of creamy goodness everywhere. For a Caesar, I omit those sorts of cheeses but grate in some fresh Parmesan instead.

5. Homemade dressing
Again, an extra step, I know. But here again, it makes your salad that much more unforgettable. On the good side, making a dressing only takes a minute. The rule of thumb is three parts oil to one part acid. Then, I add in a little salt and pepper, or get fancy with some mustard, fresh herbs, whatever seems right.
  
6. Contrast
My last tip calls for artistry. When making a salad I always step back at some point and ask about contrast. Is there visual contrast?—for example, dark croutons against greens and white cheese? Is there a balance of salty and sweet tastes, and of softness and crunch? For sweetness, I might add berries or cherry tomatoes, and for saltiness, I love olives, or, gasp, flecks of bacon. Then, if there’s not enough crunch, I might add in toasted walnuts, chopped celery, or again, bacon. Sigh.

There you have it, my ground rules for better, dare I say addictive salads. So much fun and so good for you!

More:
“What’s the most nutritious lettuce?”, The Globe and Mail
"The Healthiest Salad Greens," Huffington Post
"Ten Salad Dressings," Chef Michael Smith

 What’s the best way to convince meat lovers to “Put. The. Drumstick. Down?!” Nothing works better for my guys than earthy, gorgeous black beans.

Nutrition
As a meat replacement black beans really deliver. They’re not only low-cost and delicious, but a nutritional powerhouse, packing in—well you name it—fiber, protein, antioxidants, calcium, folic acid, plus important minerals like iron, magnesium and potassium. They even contain small amounts of omega-3 fatty acids.

On the side
With meatless meals, I work a little harder with extras to add a luxurious feel. This soup becomes special with a few tasty additions: sprinkles of fresh cilantro and green onion, a simple guacamole, creamy organic yoghurt, and corn tortilla chips fresh from the oven with a bit of oozy cheese on top.

Canned or dried?
The other issue when cooking beans usually becomes “canned or dried”? In true less-meatarian style, I’d say that’s up to you. In my house, I keep both canned and dried beans on-hand. When I’m stuck for time, canned beans are perfect. However, I also find that dried beans elevate this dish to another level, so try them if you get the chance!

BLACK BEAN SOUP
This is hands-down my favourite way of using black beans.

Ingredients
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cups dried black beans, rinsed & soaked overnight (or 2 cans black beans, rinsed)
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 rib celery, finely chopped
1 medium carrot, peeled and chopped
1 medium zucchini, chopped
1 small red pepper, chopped
1 cup frozen corn kernels
½ tsp finely chopped and seeded fresh jalapeno (optional)
1 tbsp cumin (or more if you like)
2 tsp chili powder
Salt and pepper to taste
5 cups good-quality vegetable broth (chicken broth works well too)
1 cup water

Sides
Chopped cilantro and green onions (optional)
Que Pasa Organic Tortilla Chips
ounce or two of cheddar or similar cheese
1 ripe avocado
1 fresh lime
Plan organic yoghurt
Hot pepper sauce

Instructions
- In a large soup pan, heat olive oil.
- Add onion and garlic and sauté for a minute or so. Add celery and carrot and sauté for another couple of minutes. Add zucchini, red pepper and corn. Continue sautéing for a couple of minutes.
- Next add black beans, jalapeno (if using), cumin, chili powder, and salt and pepper. Sauté until spices are fragrant.
- Add broth and water.
- Cover and simmer for 2 to 2 ½ hours, stirring occasionally. (If soup is becoming too thick, add a little more water.)

When soup is almost done
- Taste soup, confirm beans have softened nicely. Also season as required.
- Smash one ripe avocado and add your desired combination of: salt, fresh lime juice, chopped cilantro and red pepper sauce.
- Place tortilla chips in an ovenproof dish and sprinkle with grated cheddar or similar cheese. Place in 350”F oven until cheese melts.

When soup is done
- Using a handheld immersion blender, pulse the soup to give it some creaminess. (Do this to your desired consistency.)
- Serve soup with yoghurt, guacamole and chips, cilantro, green onions and hot pepper sauce, which all work equally well as soup garnish, or a side...or both.

Less-meatarian note: A bit of leftover meat (beef, chicken, smoked sausage or crumbled bacon) makes a great addition to this soup as well, for those times you may not be going meatless.

More:
"Make or buy? Canned vs. homemade beans," www.thekitchn.com
"The battle of the beans: which are best?," The Today Show
“Black Beans: Nutrition From South of the Border,” The New York Times
My previous blog post on "less-meatarianism"

When it comes to being environmentally friendly, I like steps that DON'T involve: a) total deprivation, and/or b) obscene price tags. While solar panels, for instance, would be great for my house, that’s not a simple or affordable proposition—at least not yet.

One great-but-doable step I have taken though is to become a “less-meatarian”. This is a term and lifestyle change I first came across while reading New York Times writer Mark Bittman. Basically it means eating a whole lot less meat. How you do that is up to you.

Does skipping the occasional double-cheeseburger really matter? The UN has estimated that livestock production creates almost 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. And according to Bittman, a University of Chicago study has “calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius.” But eating like this could also save you money, lower your risk of cancer and heart disease, and renew your passion in the kitchen. 

Let’s be honest. We’re not all inclined to forgo meat completely. (I’ll include my family here because we still love a nice steak now and then. And if you think everything tastes better with bacon, uh, I’m going to say you’re so, so right.) Realistically, many observers feel we have a better chance of turning things around via the less rigid principles of less-meatarianism — making real changes, but without banishing Thanksgiving turkeys and weekend eggs Benny forever.

At our house, we’ve been less-meatarian for years. Okay, we blow it a bit during BBQ season, but overall, the changes have stuck. Rather than a sense of deprivation, our tastes have shifted so we now actually crave all those veggies. Over the next few Mondays, in Meatless Monday tradition (which actually began in World War I — who knew?), I'll share some of my favourite veg recipes. 

But I'd love more variety over here too! Have a great meatless recipe to share? Please post it. I may just try your dish and show the results!

More:
The Meatless Monday movement, www.meatlessmonday.com/
Mark Bittman’s article, Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler
My previous post about food waste
My article on Reducing your family’s meat consumption

After much agonizing, I did it. 

February 1st, 2013 marked the first day in my adult life where no newspaper thwacked against my door in the predawn chill. Ignoring the telemarketers trying to woo me back, I’m giving the paper boy a pass and experimenting with new ways to get my news.

Admittedly, newsprint is still my preferred medium, especially with good coffee flowing through my veins, and--listen up, guys I live with--the TV turned off. But chances to chill have become rare.

In the early parenting years, paper reading degenerated to rereading the same sentence 20 times while my coffee got cold. Today, my son needs me less. But life hasn't slowed down and I still hardly ever get to read anything in that focused, beautiful way. As 2012 closed, I faced facts. We were recycling days’ worth of newsprint no one had read and I thought, ‘Why not ditch it and see what happens?’

It’s early days, but so far, getting my news fix is kind of fun. It involves a salad of methods: nightly TV news; online publications and websites; Facebook and real-time chatter with friends; bits of NPR and CBC radio; blazing headlines at the grocery checkout; crunched up notices in my son’s backpack; some print magazines; and the fat papers we grab at the hockey rink on weekends.

Some observers see disaster in this scattershot consumption, that social media especially, is destroying our attention spans and encouraging us to eat only dessert (i.e., let’s skip Syria and go straight to the Kardashian baby bump news).

Other pundits disagree. Traditional newspapers, they argue, claim to contain a balanced day's helping of global news but are actually products of large media outlets with various biases. (I got a perspective on this in the 1990s while volunteering for a year in Kenya in refugee advocacy work. I encountered victims of civil war and genocide, slum dwellers, and street children, as well as amazing grassroots-level activists. A lot didn't get covered back home. As I learned, North American media outlets are simply disinclined to pick up too many offshore stories, no matter how compelling.)

Social media defenders say the digital age is democratizing news, bringing us the type of unconventional and far-flung stories most media outlets have long ignored (an example here is the story of young Pakastani girl Malala Yousafzai which got a tremendous boost on social media).

Is it the better way? I’m still undecided. My paperless news diet is tasty but I haven’t shaken the feeling stuff is going to fall through the cracks. Will a daily paper thud back onto our veranda ever again? That remains to be seen.

How about you? Where do you get your daily news fix? 
Are your habits changing?

I’ve been pitching stories about food waste to magazines for a couple of years with no luck—until now. Later this year I’ll see one published in a parenting magazine. (I’ll link to it when it's out.)

Have we reached the tipping point on food waste? There’s definitely more buzz lately. Last month the UN launched a global campaign to cut the “1.3 billion tonnes of food lost or wasted each year” around the globe. 

In 2010, Jonathan Bloom, a U.S., author and activist — tireless champion of waste reduction—released his book American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It). Imperfect looking (but perfectly edible) produce, like the tomato above, is one of the foods he says most people would toss.

At our house, we got fed up with food waste several years ago after an embarrassing clear out of our freezer. As my husband and I pulled out package after package of food—snowy, unappetizing victims of freezer burn, quite literally gone to waste—I resolved it wouldn't happen again.

It's been a fascinating journey—but way more uncomfortable than I expected. The reasons we waste food aren’t very flattering. Sometimes we’re as finicky as our kids. (Funny looking tomato? I don’t want to eat that.) Or we’re conspicuous consumers. We buy glorious cartfuls of (local, organic) food at all the right shops and markets but waste half of it because, let's get real, we hit the drive-thru three times a week. Or we’re just plain greedy. We want choice, four kinds of bread in the bread basket, even if we've cut back on gluten and only make sandwiches twice a week. (Guilty.)

But other factors are at work too: our hectic lifestyles, and a consumer culture pressuring us to buy, buy, buy. Anyway, whatever's to blame, we all know where it leads—to nasty stuff growing at the back of our fridges, freezers and pantries. The huge takeaway though is that wasting food has big-time environmental, financial and social consequences. As Bloom writes: “Wasting food squanders the oil and water used to produce it, and food rotting in landfills creates climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions.” This is also food that hungry people could have eaten.

The upside? I’ve found turning things around isn’t actually that hard—a little planning here, a little family communication there—and you can save quite a bit of coin too. According to one estimate, the average family of four wastes more than $2,000 worth of food every year. How would you like to spend those savings?

Does food get wasted at your house? Have you found ways to waste less? I’d love to hear about it.

It’s ironic. Just as I’m launching my new website and blog, my son, approaching nine, becomes self-conscious. And assertive. 

“Are you writing about me?” he asks me. (This  isn’t exactly narcissistic since I do write about him a lot.) Then he tells me that if I do, he wants to know about it, and review it first.

Developmentally, this is right on cue. And I did expect this reckoning. But now that it’s here—me with a story to tell (all catlike, guilty feathers sticking out of my mouth), and him, hands-on- hips, calling me out—I realize this is more than a journalistic dilemma. We’ve come to another one of those parenting crossroads. What worked yesterday just doesn’t cut it today. 

His growth tells me, once again that, just as he is changing, I need to change too. What we were so recently, cut-up grapes, and Mommy-and-me classes, that’s gone. His blind faith in me, also evolving. I know something brilliant will rise from the ashes. We will discover how to make it work and it's a wonderful process. But each time it happens, I always feel—mixed in with my pride at his healthy displays of independence—a little stab of mourning. All that giving, then the letting go, ever reassessing and adjusting, such a tricky part of parenting.

I reassure my son that my blog won’t share embarrassing stories about him. In fact, it’s really more about me. When Zach was born, I stepped away from corporate writing to enjoy his early years. Then when he started school, I began to resurrect my freelance writing career. As he made friends in JK and mastered his pencil grip, I wrote query letters and started landing writing assignments.

Today, I’ve got a healthy, and growing, body of work. I’ve created my website to feature that and make it available for clients and readers. Alongside, my blog will expand on the issues I’m writing about, give some of the back story, and ask you to weigh in.

My next blog post (where I don't mention my son at all!!), talks about food waste. I'm passionate about this issue, have just written about it, and let's be honest, I've been guilty here too. Check it out, and let's talk.