h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Colourful Rice Salad

Rice salad is fun if you boil two loads of rice, one with tumeric and one without turmeric. Mind you red camargue rice, brown rice and wild rice have made it much easier to have interesting rice salads. Use basmati rice, or a good long-grain if you cannot get basmati. Other ingredients? Whatever you like: finely chopped peppers, peas (defrost, but no need to cook), not tomatoes or cucumber because they are both too soggy, peanuts if you are not allergic, all sorts of good things.


No-cabbage cole-slaw

Chop slice or grate a selection of three of the following:
carrots
swedes (the yellow ones not the white ones)
raddishes
cauliflower
mange tout peas
kenyan string beans
add one or more of the following
sunflower seeds
pumpkin seeds
sesame seeds
Engulf in a mix of yoghurt and mayo


Red Salad

Make a green salad with red ingredients
Red onion
Red cabbage
Raddishes
Raddiccio
Red grapes (those small sharp red chilean ones)
and grated beetroot
(don't use tomatoes or red peppers, they are the wrong red)


Red Coleslaw

Make a normal coleslaw with grated beetroot, red cabbage and red onion.


Toasted Sunflower Seeds

You can toast these dry in a pan, in oil, or in soy sauce, and sprinkle them hot and hissing onto any salad. Pumpkin seeds will do but are less successful.


Finely grated carrot and poppy seeds - (does what it says on the tin).


Any green salad is improved with either sliced apple or sharp grapes.


I could go on and on. I get very annoyed with the dismal salads offered by hotels and restaurants. I don't cook vegetables from April to September! (And last time I had my vitamin and mineral levels checked by my dietician I had not taken any supplements for 3 months - I was spot on for all except folic acid, which was slightly low. Which only goes to show there are vits in them thar greens.

a herbivore called Ben

Let me just be the first to thank you for all of those wonderful recipes. I am looking forward to using them. I am also a vegetarian and have been for about 8 years and though I must say, restraunts have gotten better since then, there is still such a horrible lack of recipes for us. When I first started, my choice was steamed veggies, or. . .steamed veggies. Now there is usually at least one real choice on the menu for me. Though I truly feel it could get better. Where I am living now is like Vegie Heaven though. Santa Cruz, CA. It's hard to find a place that serves meat here. And for that I say Whoo Hoo!

I was probably a little misleading when I said 'herbivore'. I very rarely cook or eat meat, beause I love good vegetarian food too much.

But I have a wheat sensitivity and I travel; as a result I quite often get protein cravings. (It was worse when I was lactose-intollerant too).

So I do eat meat when I travel, but I don't eat it at home. Mind you, it was worth ordering a plate of vegetables and a side salad in a german restaurant this week simply to see the look on the waitress's face.

My problem is I actually like every kind of food....

Enjoy the recipes, they are great when you have vistors because they don't taste too different from what people expect, but they do look different.

And if I had to give a single piece of advice about salads, it would be toast sunflower seeds and sprinkle them on the top.

Ben