Crunchy Munchie!

I'm not gonna get whiny about it or anything but seriously, if you ever feel like you're salad is just missing that "something" to make it something other than an obligatory food group, I'll tell you what I personally feel that something is.  Ready?




All you need is CRUNCH!!!

Not kidding, if I had to choose between dressing & crunch. Close race, but I'd go for the crunch.  I mean that really is what makes salad so boring, is the "samey-ness" of it all.  Everything is sort of chewy and fiberous and before you know it you start feeling like the "Nom-nom-nom hamster".  And if you're thinking, "well, veggies are crunchy, aren't they?", forget it, must be an oil filled crunchiness.

Isn't that just what the world needs more of?  All we need is crunch.....and oil!  Do you feeeeeeel me?  (metaphorically)

 And if you're gonna whine to me about how you have nothing in your kitchen that's crunchy.  To that I say, "YOU LIE!!!".  Check it out:

- Nuts & seeds like: pecans, almonds, cashews, walnuts, pine nuts, pumpkin seeds
(roast them up in a dry skillet till theu're just the tiniest brown, letm cool before chopping & serving)
 - Croutons: use old bread, chop it/rip it, throw it in a bowl, drizzle a little EV olive oil, salt & dried spices, throwm' on some tinfoil in the grill or toaster & TADA!!  Croutons!!  And we can't leave out the mother of all Lebanese salads Fattoush with grilled/toasted day old pita or flat bread. 
 - Bacon: fry it & crumble it up....I'm telling you if you're in a kitchen crisis, there's almost NOTHING bacon won't fix.  Or in a jiff I'm sure no one will squirm about commercial bacon bits.
 - Bread crumbs: if you make Chicken Parmeasan or Penguin Chicken & have left over bread crumbs, throw them in a bowl
 - Potato chips?  SURELY without question! My DH has a special love for chips so I constantly & without question raid his stash for some extra crunch.  The chips in the pic are those lovely spicy "karamucho" chips.  But how good are tortilla chips too? Heck, I'm willing to try sembe or kakinotane.
 - Don't forget the fried renkon chippies too.
- And we're not even wading into the "meats" territory because you can take any grilled, bbqed or fried meat or fish & top your salad with it and you're ready to rumble.


I mean it's really all a mind game, isn't it?.  Because the truth is we'd probably all just rather down the bowl of crunch rather than eat our serving of salad....I literally make twice as much salad if I'm gonna add something like pecans & bacon to it.

Well, that's it for now.  Hope you get inspired to ransack your pantry & dig out some salad worthy CRUNCH!!!!