Dumbo: Gourmet Extraordinaire - #7: "Carboed" Salad

Now, if you are one of those people who must have "carb" in your salad, you are probably very familiar with "potato salad" (is it even salad?), "pasta salad" and so on.

Very delicious, they are; no doubt.

But of course they are not as easy to prepare as the plain old vegetable salad.

I mean, all you have to do is just rinse the vegetables, cut them up, then dress. (No, not yourself. The salad.)

But with potato salad and pasta salad, you have to actually COOK the potato or pasta. Ugh. Usually, we eat salad to avoid cooking. So, potato salad and pasta salad will really defeat the purpose.

***

The other day, we were having salad again, one for wanting to make up for the lack of greens in our diet for the past few days, and two for feeling lazy to lit the stove.

We bought a great bunch of vegetables for that: two varieties of lettuce, carrot, Japanese cucumber, and lots of cherry tomatoes.

We only dressed it with a little bit of mayonnaise, so you could really taste the vegetables. And that was very refreshing at first. But after the second bowl (my wife practically stopped after one bowl; she wasn't really hungry, she said), it started to feel a little bland, and my taste buds were crying out for some variation. Preferably some carb.

But we had neither potato nor pasta at hand. Besides, I wasn't going to start cooking.

Then an idea struck me. Jacob's.

***

I meant Jacob's "Hi-Fibre" Wholemeal Wheat Crackers. My favorite crackers. I could eat a whole bunch of them just like that. And even more if you give me a glass of milk to dunk them.

Jacob's Hi-Fibre is not as creamy (translate: oily) as ordinary cream crackers, and you can really taste the wholemeal-ness. Its wheaty fragrance is unparalleled by other crackers I have tasted so far.

So, I took out several pieces of Jacob's Hi-Fibre to put the carb into my salad.

Now, if you are going to try this, don't break the crackers and mix them into the salad. They will just get soggy.

Instead, take a bite of the wheat cracker with every bite of salad.

It turned out to be surprisingly delicious. The juiciness and coolness of the greens are perfectly complemented by the warm texture of the crackers, and the wheaty fragrance of the crackers greatly enhances the richness of the blended tastes of the various vegetables.

It's like vegetable sandwich. Only much richer in taste (unless you are talking about using wholemeal bread for the sandwich).

So, next time you need some carb in your salad, don't bother with boiling the potatoes or pastas. Just reach for a tin of Jacob's Hi-Fibre.