Produce Spotlight: Spring Salads – Strawberry & Kale Quinoa Salad
All right, everyone. Welcome once again to our produce spotlight series. And here we are, the last Tuesday in April. Can you believe it? I cannot. Absolutely craziness. Okay, but for the whole month of April, we have been talking about different types of spring salads. Okay, in particular, entree salads that could serve them as a side. But if you’re in a salad mood, this is the class for you because you can have it as your actual meal as well. So, of course, this is produce spotlight. Salads fall into that produce category, but we’re going to highlight a specific produce item in our salad here in a moment as we go on. We are making a strawberry and kale quinoa salad with salmon. There’s a lot going on. It sounds like there’s a lot going on, but there’s really not. Okay. So, just hold your horses. It’s okay. Don’t feel overwhelmed because it’s going to be super simple and easy. That’s actually why I’m sitting at my dining room table today instead of in the kitchen because I’m like, I’m going to have a seat and we’re just going to chat through this and I’m just assembling a salad at the end. So, it’s that easy that you can do it at the table instead of, you know, getting everything out in the kitchen. All right. So, here is a picture of it. This is from our savory site, of course. Now, here’s the little catch, okay? On our savory site, it’s actually just a strawberry and kale quinoa salad. There’s no salmon. That was a Shaya thing. Decided to throw that in. Are you surprised? Probably not. Okay. Um, but that’s the great thing I always like to say about recipes is that they are just inspiration. Okay. Um, there are no rules. You can add what you want. So, you wouldn’t have to do salmon, you can do chicken, whatever it might be. We’ll talk about different ideas as we go along. But I wanted to just point out that if you do look it up on our site or you click on the links below here that it is just the strawberry, kale, and quinoa salad, you can see that it does research, excuse me, it does receive a guiding star. So, it’s going to be one of our better for you recipes, a great nutrition profile um there with that as well. Okay. So, let’s take a look at the ingredients here. We’re going to break these ingredients one by one in a moment, but just this is how easy it is. Okay. Um, it’s actually on our savory site as a take five recipe, meaning only five ingredients. That whole Shaya part of adding the salmon made it six, but that’s okay. Um, but as you can see here, we’re going to be using red quinoa. You could use just regular white quinoa if you would prefer, but the red adds a nice little pop to go with the strawberries, some baby kale dressing, feta cheese, my favorite guys. I think you remember a while ago I introduced you to Zach. He’s our well-being coordinator. He’s um on a lot of our classes and I believe on today. He and I share a love for feta cheese. I hope you guys do too because it is the best. Yes. Um, so anywh who, those are the ingredients that we’ll chat more about here in a moment. Here are the directions. Once again, so easy. We’re pretty much just assembling this salad. So, since the recipe is so easy, I really wanted to take some time to break down the star of our show, which is kale. Okay, produce spotlight. We always try to really emphasize a certain produce item and I feel like it’s been a while since we’ve done kale. So, here we are. Kale was like the hot thing for the longest time, right? It was super trendy. Kind of faded out, I feel like, for a little bit, but for no good reason. Okay. Um, it should come back for sure. Uh, so I’m bringing it back today. We’ve decided. Okay. Here we go with kale. There are a ton of different varieties of kale, different types out there, but these are going to be the two most commons and the ones that we sell in particular in our stores. Okay, so the first one, probably the most common in stores would be curly kale. Um, it’s called curly kale because you’ll see that it has frilly edges. Okay, we’re going to look at pictures of them in a moment, but yes, frilly. I love the word frilly. So, frilly edges. Um, but from a taste standpoint, if this appeals to you, um, kale being a part of the mustard family is very peppery, bitter, but it’s also very fibrous, so it’s very chewy. All right? Because of this and these qualities with curly kale, this type of kale is going to be better to actually cook or to roast. So, putting it into soups or stews, making um kale chips out of it, those types of things. It’s going to be better to cook curly kale. You don’t have to if you like that peppery, bitter flavor, but um that’s going to be the suggested route here. Now, on the flip side of that, we have Italian kale, which can be called a lot of different things. Um most notably, my favorite, dinosaur kale. Um, it’s it originates from Tuscanyany, hence why most people call it Italian kale. And it’s typically used in Italian dishes. Now, it is going to look a bit different than curly kale because it’s not going to have those frilly edges. It’s going to be flat and a little bumpy, and that’s why it gets that name of dinosaur kale. Um, because it looks, not to sound whatever, but it kind of looks like the skin of a dinosaur or a reptile. Okay. Um, the taste is going to be a good bit different from curly kale. It’s going to be mild, a bit sweeter, and much more tender than the curly kale. All right. Um, so you can absolutely cook it, but if you’re looking for a good raw kale to do in like a salad, the Italian kale is going to be a good bet for that. Okay. Now, I haven’t been able to look too much at chat, so maybe you guys are already saying this, but I just want to get it out there, ask you guys the question, do you even like kale? Um, yes, you do. Nope, not your thing. Or no, I’ve never tried it. Okay, let me know um what you’re thinking there in our uh poll. Okay, I see some of you are popping it into chat as well, which is fine. Um, oh, doing a kale and rainbow Swiss chard this year. I like Rainbow Swiss chard. Um, all right. So, we’re a little all over the place, but a good chunk of you do like it. I’m going to go ahead and end the poll now. Share the results. Over 50% do. Around 30 do not. And some of you have never tried it. I really hope after today that you do. Okay. So, let me get out of this here and we’ll keep chatting all about the kale. Here are um two different pictures of kale. So, the one on the left is going to be that curly kale. You can see those frilly edges on the side as in comparison on the right to that Italian or dinosaur kale that you can see the leaves are much flatter and really bumpy. So, that is a really great way to pick them out differently in the store. I’m going to show you a lot of different kale products that we carry in our stores if you would rather um have the kale already pulled from the stem and ready to go. Here we have um two varieties of pre-washed kale greens. Um, from the looks of it, both of these look like curly kale to me, um, from the edges, but they are both pre-washed, ready to use. Okay, whether you just want regular carol or if you prefer organic, we have it in our Nature’s Promise line as well. We also have our prepackaged containers of kale. So, um, you can see both of these are going to contain baby kale, which we’ll chat more about here in a minute. The recipe that we’re doing today calls for the package that’s on the right, the baby kale and spring mix. I’m going to be honest with you guys, I’m not a big spring mix kind of gal, which worked out conveniently because a lot of other people must be because we were out of it at Giant yesterday. I think it’s a pretty popular item. Um, so more power to you guys that you got the spring mix in there and then I picked up a different kale to use in my salad today. So, it works out for everybody. All right, but like I said, both of these use the baby kale. So, what is baby kale? What does that mean? And basically, it’s the immature leaves of any type of kale. So, you could have baby kale that’s curly kale, dinosaur kale, whatever it might be, but they’re going to be the very, very young leaves that are harvested very early on, okay? They’re going to be very small and because of that, they’re going to be a lot more tender and the flavor is going to be a lot more mild compared to like a full grown kale leaf. Okay? So, anytime that you’re doing a salad and you’re kind of looking for that more tender flavor, I would suggest looking for the baby kale. But there are some ways to work around that as well, which we’ll chat about if you just buy the regular kale. But when you see that verbiage, that is what it means. Okay. A couple other varieties of kale that we sell in our stores. We of course have it in our frozen section. You guys know I like frozen foods a whole bunch. So, these are some great ones on my list here. Um, just the regular chopped kale on the left. And then on the right, if you are a smoothie person, we have the kale and spinach fusion blend with strawberries, blueberries, banana, and then that chopped kale and spinach. So, you could use it for whatever you would like, but this is the one frozen fruit and veggie mix that I would say right up there for smoothies. Okay, here are some other fun products in our store. I really love both of these. On the left, our Nature’s Promise chicken sausage. I am all about our chicken sausage in store. We have precooked as well as raw or uncooked, which is what you’re seeing here on the left. Um, they’re going to be a bit of a leaner option compared to your pork sausage. And this is a fun one once again with that kale mixed in. Um, I think that this can be great sauteed and cut up for like a pasta dish, um, or rice. Either one would be lovely or you could just eat it as it is. Um, but I think pasta would be a great one for this or a soup or a stew. Okay, on the right, as we’re getting into these warmer days, maybe you’re thinking about sllo. So instead of just doing a typical cole slaw, I love our kale sllo. We have a rainbow sllo. We have a broccoli saw. It’s hard for me to say over and over again. Um, but this is a fun one here. It’s mixed with cabbage and broccoli stocks as well as cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. So a neat product there that you’ll find near the salad section in produce. Okay. Now, I told you guys that I was using something a little bit different for my salad today. Here it is. Um, if you’ve been hanging out with me for a while, you know I love the Taste of Inspirations line, especially our chopped salad kit. My go-to, I will be honest, is the Caesar because I love all things Caesar. Um, but I thought that the sweet kale is a great one, too. Okay, once again, this is a bit similar to the slo that it’s going to be mixed with the cabbage and the broccoli and Brussels sprouts, which I love Brussels sprouts. And then it comes with some other goodies here, too. So, papas, dried cranberries, and a poppy seed dressing. So, I’ll show you how we’re going to put all this together here in a minute, um, after we go through some more ingredients. But, this is what I’m going to be using today. Now, I said that there are ways to work around um not always using baby kale if you can’t find it or whatnot or you’ve decided to grow your own kale or you you buy the regular kale in our stores. Um you can massage the kale. Okay, so this is ideal for when you’re deciding to eat kale raw like in a salad as we’re doing today. And when you massage the kale, it really breaks down that fibrous nature of it. And it makes the leaves so much tender to not only um chew more easily, but also digests more easily, too, which I think is important. Um it also softens up that bitter flavor. So, how do you do it? Very simple. You’re going to remove the leaves from the stem. Okay? So, remember those curly kales or the dinosaur kale pictures that we looked at? There’s a long stem running in them. You’re going to pull them apart from this the the stem. Just a little bit of olive oil on your fingers and just rubbing them between your fingers until they start to wilt a little bit. Okay. My suggestion if you’ve never done this before would be to eat a piece of kale just as it is off of the stem and see what you think of it and then do it after massaging the kale. And there’s going to be a pretty big um difference with that. I’m gonna give you guys a little sneak peek here, okay? I’m just telling you guys here today, but in September, um, if you are familiar with, um, in the past, we’ve done programs with UPMC, UPMC, cooking with the cardiologist. Previously, we were doing them often in the central PA area. Um, not that York isn’t central PA, but we’re moving a little south with our program. In September, we’re going to be doing cooking with the cardiologist at UPMC York Memorial and we’re going to be doing it all about kale and we’re going to include the farm that they have there and it’s going to be a really great time. So, it’s very limited registration in person. Um, be on the lookout on UPMC’s website. If you’re a patient of theirs, you might get something in the mail. um as I know about it, I will tell you guys about it, but um I’ll be there with some of the cardiologists. We’re going to do a whole little experiment with kale and a nice um recipe with that, too. So, that’s the heads up. I missed my last point here on the slide that it’s not necessary to do this massaging of the kale if you’re already having baby kale, of course, or if the kale is really thinly shredded already. So, what I’m using today in this salad kit is already very thinly shredded. So, I don’t need to do that for our salad today either. Okay. Um, so let’s move along here. I’ve talked so much about kale, but here as a dietitian, I haven’t told you why you should be eating it, right? Besides it has a cool name like dinosaur kale. Um, here are the three big things. Number one, vitamin C. Okay, lots of fruits and vegetables of course contain vitamin C, but kale actually contains three times more than most other leafy green vegetables. Okay, it’s quite a bit. And I know we typically think about vitamin C and cold prevention. If you’ve been with me, I’ve given this spiel before. It’s not necessarily that vitamin C prevents colds. What it more so does is vitamin C is like our bodyguard, especially with our skin, with our tissues, all of that. It helps establish the barriers from the inside of our body to the outside of our body so that we’re not as susceptible to all of the germs that are out there. So, it’s important for us to have vitamin C so it can act as a bodyguard within us to then help prevent sickness that way. Okay. It of course also is a great antioxidant. So when we think about cancer prevention and things of that nature, the more antioxidants that we can get in, the better. Vitamin K is also going to be the big one with kale. So think kale, vitamin K. Um, vitamin K is going to be a big reason for blood clotting. Okay. Now, of course, if you are on blood thinners, things like humid and whatnot, we do need to monitor vitamin K. That’s something to go over with your doctor about how to incorporate vitamin K sources into your diet consistently. Um, so that is something to chat about with them in terms of any types of medications that you might be taking. But for the rest of the population, getting in vitamin K can be a good thing for not only blood clotting but also our bone health. Okay. Um, there’s a lot of research out there with vitamin K and osteoporosis. Lastly, our vision because um kale has a lot of beta carotene which turns into vitamin A and helps our vision and then also things like luteine and zoxipathin also help with our eye health. So, tons of reasons to be having kale, right? Okay, we’re making a hard switch here from kale to strawberries. So, don’t forget this is a kale salad, but there’s strawberries and other Gettys in it. Here, I always like to show you guys fun different strawberries that we have in our stores. A couple weeks ago, I talked about Driscoll’s sweetest batch strawberries. This is going to be similar to that from Sunset. Right now in our stores, we have their Wow Dream Berry berries. And as the tagline says there, they are perfectly sweet every time. So, they’re just meant to be a very sweet and strawberry tasting strawberry. Okay, I would encourage you to check out their website there. The link is on the bottom right. They have lots of fun recipes. I was checking them out this morning, so give them a gander on their website there. Okay. Um, to wrap up before we actually build our salad here, I know I’ve been talking a lot, but this is the quinoa I’m going to be using today. This is a great pantry staple, our Nature’s Promise red quinoa. We also have white quinoa. These are our microwavable packs of them. So, if you’re someone who’s like, “Well, I don’t know how to cook quinoa,” I would say no worries. Pop this in the microwave for 90 seconds and you’re done. If you are cooking quinoa from scratch, it’s very similar to cooking rice. There’s a lot of recommendations out there to cook it in like a low sodium chicken broth to give it a bit more flavor. um also works too. Okay, finishing it up. This was the optional part of the recipe to add salmon. Um you could do chicken, you could do black beans, any other type of protein that you want to throw in there. I just I don’t know, I automatically went to salmon. I did this recipe once um for Valentine’s Day and did steak. So, whatever you would like. Two great options in the way of salmon that’s not fresh would be um what I’m using today on the right, your frozen salmon. I chat about these often. They’re individually wrapped. Take out what you need from the freezer to thaw. That’s what we’re using today. But as I was um getting this out of my freezer a little late this morning, I was like, why did I not get canned salmon? This canned salmon would be perfect on a salad like this because it takes no time at all. So either option, greatest sources of omega-3 for our heart, for our mental health, all of that good stuff. Okay, now I just talked for a good while and you’re probably like, when are we making this salad? We’re making it now. Okay, so um I have my salad kit here and I took out the packet of goodies, which we’ll look at here in a moment. But let me go ahead and pan down here to our bowl. Um, I’m just going to make this nice individual bowl for myself. You could serve this to the family and a bigger bowl, of course, if you would like. But what I wanted to show you guys about salad making here is that I like to layer my salads. All right. So, I’m going to start with the actual salad. Here’s that curly, thinly chopped kale. It is curly kale. I can see the frilly edges over here. Okay. Um, so we have that down there. Then, like I said, I like to layer. I have already cooked my quinoa in the microwave and then put it in a bowl for it to cool a bit. So, I’m going to go ahead and sprinkle some of that on there. Of course, on the recipe there is actual measurements. I don’t do that, right? I do things until they look pretty in my mind. So, I have my um my kale mixture down. I have my red quinoa down. Now, I’m going to go ahead and I’ve sliced up some of those greenberry strawberries, which were just so lovely and all of that. Okay, I’m going to kind of push them out to the side a bit so you can see them as you build your salad. Maybe pop one there in the middle. But really, even from a presentation standpoint, the bigger reason to be doing this is so that when you actually eat your salad, you know, you’re getting all of this goodness at the bottom, too, that you’re not getting just that stuff on the top. So, I’m also over here. Here’s that feta. Going to put a little bit of that in there. Oh, feta is the best. Okay, I’m not going to put the salmon in there yet. You could, especially if you’re doing canned salmon, but I’m going to save that for the top. All right. Now, you just keep doing that. You just layer more in. I’ll just kind of leave it at that. Sort of boring you guys with with more layers. Oh, there’s that nice Brussels sprout in there. A little bit of the red cabbage. I saw this thing today that was like, who decided to call purple cabbage red cabbage when it’s clearly purple? And I agree with them. Okay, let’s do a little more. Good. Now we do that red quinoa. Okay, nice bit of that on here. Like I said, I’m just making this for myself. You would use more of these ingredients. If you’re making it for the whole crew, you could do a big bowl and toss all of things to these things together, which I think is what the recipe indicates to do. But we’re not playing by the rules today here with this salad because why would we, right? Okay, I got some strawberries on there. Lovely. Now, I have my salmon. Pardon me. I’m going to use my hands. I just washed them. All right. I just cooked that salmon right before class. We’re going to layer on there like so. And now I’m going to do some more feta. Some of these are bigger pieces. I going to crumble it up just a tad. Looking good. Oh, this is looking fun. Looking good. And we might put like a strawberry there. A little Let’s see. Do I have another one that I could put here? Maybe. That’s okay. Good. Good. Okay. Now, for the dressing part, guys. Okay, when I started to get stuff here, let me pan up. When I started to get stuff for this recipe, and I didn’t know I was using this salad kit, one of my favorite dressings, I told you guys I’m a Caesar gal, is that I got the Bolt House Farm Creamy Caesar. So, these are yogurt based dressings. I chat about them a lot. They’re found in our produce section. They’re refrigerated. Because they are yogurt based, they are going to be lower in calories, lower in fat, all of that good stuff. There’s no added sugar to these. So 50 calories for two tablespoons, which would be a nice healthy drizzle on this salad here. So I think that this can be a great option. Now, I did get the kit, which like I said, the kit comes with goodies here. Here are the pumpkin seeds or papitas with dried cranberries. This feels very fall to me. Not that you can’t have fall right now, but I don’t want to. So, I’m not going to use these. Although, I love everything in here. This could just be a snack for me later. I am going to use the dressing because it’s a poppy seed dressing. So, number one, I think poppy seed and strawberries always go lovely together. Number two, from an aesthetic reason, I like using these bags because you’re just going to cut that corner off and it’s going to allow for a nice pretty drizzle onto our salad here. So, let’s go back and we’re just going to go right here in a little diagonal motion. Oh, look at that. Ain’t that fun? and fancy. There it is. Okay, there you guys have it. We made it through that whole big conversation about kale and have this beautiful strawberry and kale quinoa salad with salmon. All right, thank you guys so much for hanging out with me today. I had a ton of fun with you guys. Um, and I hope you enjoy the rest of this beautiful day. Hopefully, you can get outside and I will chat with you later. All right. Bye, guys.
Produce Spotlight: Spring Salads – Strawberry & Kale Quinoa Salad
Featured Recipe https://recipecenter.martinsfoods.com/recipes/125773/strawberry-and-kale-quinoa-salad
This class was recorded on 4/29/25.
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