Sea Veggies Salad

Sea Veggie Salad pg. 177

Today I am throwing a baby shower for my best girl friend from Jr. High.  We have been friends for 27 years!  She is having her first baby in a few months.  A girl! So today my house is decorated all girly and pink for her shower.  She and her hubby have flown in from their hometown of London to celebrate with us.  I hope she has a fantastic time.  Not sure how she couldn't really!  I will take lots of pictures and post a few on my next blog entry.

Yesterday, I made one of the recipes I was soooooo dreading from CSK, The Sea Veggie Salad.   I just couldn't imagine sprinkling a bunch of sea veggies in my salad.  The recipe caused me a bit of trouble before I even had the chance to prepare it.  First off the dish calls for Pea Shoots.  Absolutely nobody had Pea Shoots.  I asked Whole Foods if they could order them and they said no.  Our local Sprouts grocery store didn't have any either.  How could a store named Sprouts not have them? I do have to admit, Sprouts is such a cute grocery store. I highly recommend visiting one if you get the chance. I tried Albertson's, another grocery store.  I called a Von's and Ralph's, more grocery stores.  I visited an Asian market, but again nothing.  I finally Tweeted Chef Sarno asking him for a replacement for Pea Shoots.  The Tweet went something like this, "Help!  Need an alternative for Pea Shoots. Need to finish this darn cookbook! "  His reply was "Sunflower Sprouts." So I called Whole Foods and ordered Sunflower Sprouts. Phew!

When I went to Whole Foods on my next shopping trip, this is what I found:

Hello sprouts! They had so many to choose from.  Guess what they also had, Pea Sprouts.  Not sure how close they are to pea shoots, but I figure they both had the word "pea" in it so I went with the Pea Sprouts.  Next up was finding the dreaded sea veggies that I was convinced would ruin this salad for me.  I found one of them, Hijiki.  I was totally stunned when I discovered the huge price tag for the bag of tiny sea veggies.  Check it out:

$21.99! I felt like I was being extorted for money just to finish the recipe.  I bought the darn veggie feeling terrible because it felt incredibly over priced, and on top of it I was pretty sure I was going to hate them.  Now here is the good news.  I stopped by the Asian market on my way home and found the same sea veggie for $2 bucks!  Hallelujah!  I went back to Whole Foods and returned their very over priced sea veggie.  Nobody had the other sea veggie the recipe called for arame. So I went with a very reasonably priced dulse.

The salad was a cinch to make.  Just wash and soak your stinky sea veggies.

The hijiki really expanded.  It was so weird! Anyway, then mix your ingredients together.

The verdict, for The Sea Veggie Salad was not as bad as I anticipated!  Again, phew!  It isn't going to become a regular in my house, but if I was served it at a restaurant I would eat it.
6 recipes to go...