Easy Healthy Salad - Strawberry Lemon Salad

Eating right leads to a healthier life. While it is so simple an idea it not as easy as it sounds. Proper nutrition choices should be the main motivation for us home cooks.

This healthy recipe is fast, flavorful and nutritious and can easily be prepared within 30 minutes or less. Perfect when you get home from a long and tiring day at work and too drained to cook that big meal. This dish can be served as an appetizer or as a dessert. Strawberry-lemon salad is thoroughly refreshing with a balance of flavors that will surprise your palate: bitter, sweet, and sour. The rind of the lemon are sliced into thin strips and heated in sweet sugar syrup, then used to garnish the slices of strawberries. Lemon sauce is poured on the dish and a sprig of mint is used to decorate and add fresh flavor. It is also served with scoops of lemon sorbet making this ultra-invigorating. Add Macaroon pieces at the end of the recipe, which has already been prepared beforehand. You can also purchase macaroons in a pastry shop, create your own, or substitute it with other similar pastries. The starch will contrast to the fruits and give it a dry dimension.

Here is how to make this awesome healthy recipe.

Cooking Recipe Preparation time

• Preparation time: 30 minutes

Cooking Recipe Ingredients

• 6 lemons

• 0.55 lbs. strawberries

• 3.5 oz. sugar

• 0.33 lbs. pectin

• 4 scoops of lemon sorbet

• 8 macaroon pieces

Cooking recipe preparation instructions

1. Peel the 2 lemons.

2. Mince the lemon peels. Blanch in cold water and drain.

3. Preserve the lemon peels in a mixture of half water, half sugar.

4. Recover the lemon juice.

5. Add 0.33 lbs. sugar. Bring to boil.

6. Add the pectin, boil again, and skim (remove the mousse).

7. Wash and prepare the strawberries. Cut them into quarters.

8. For the presentation, spread the lemon sauce over the serving dish. Place a scoop of lemon sorbet on top of it and lay the strawberries around it. Decorate with some fresh mint leaves and preserved lemon peels.

This refreshing salad dessert can be combined with a sweet wine such as Maury's vins doux naturels, which is made of Grenache grape varieties. This kind of wine is extremely fruity and will complement well with the sweetness of the strawberry, the bitterness of the lemon skins, and the sweet-sourness of the lemon sauce. While it is very simple to make, this dish has complex and intricately layered flavors that can be savored unhurriedly for superior enjoyment.

Fish Salad - A Memorable Dish in Danang

If your Vietnam Tour adventure brings you to Danang, then you're in the right place. Not only was it an educational and commercial center of Central Vietnam, it also lies within 100 kilometers of the best sites and places you can visit in this country. Several UNESCO World Heritage Sites like the ruins of My Son, Hoi An Old Town and the Imperial City of Hue are easily accessible from this natural transportation hub which you will visit one by one on your booked Vietnam Tours.

But perhaps, the most memorable experience you can have in this fabulous city is a taste of their exotic dish called "Goi Ca" or fish salad. You might have heard of this when you have booked your best Vietnam Tours package and you might even have a taste of it back in your accommodation. But if you have tasted a fish salad that features sliced tomatoes all mangled with lettuce leaves that are already flaccid; and served with a few slices of tuna and some small prawns all swimming in mayonnaise, then you haven't tasted the real thing! Fact is you have tasted the commercial offerings which you can safely call the "Westernized" version. If you want to taste the real Vietnam Goi Ca, then go to Man Thai Beach along Son Tra Peninsula in Danang.

Lined along the beach front where the fishing boats are moored, on the brick side walk itself are several vendors of real Danang style fish salad. These vendors only sell "Goi Ca" and it will taste a lot better than the one you can order at most restaurants lining the beach in Danang. The first reason is that it's the only thing they do. The second one is they only use the freshest ingredients available.

True to Vietnam's style of food preparation, local ingredients that Danang fish salad vendors use are fresh mint and herbs in abundant quantity, onions, carrot, galangal, green mango and squids; and fish newly caught by local fishermen. With this variety of natural ingredients, prepare your palate on a complex taste of Asian salad that is anything but bland. The color of the fresh ingredients is really enticing. No fancy food garnish is needed to make your mouth water with anticipation. Just imagine the arrangement of lush green mint leaves, yellow green of fresh sprouts, red of pepper and yellow galangal. Set it on the white of the squid and fresh fish meat and what you get is a festival of colors. The texture of the taste is incomparable, spicy pepper and galangal, sour green mango, salty sweet seafood and the bittersweet taste of fibre on the leaves makes for some real mouth-watering indulgence. Don't forget to wrap them in rice paper and dip in locally prepared sauce before you take a bite to have that mouth full of bursting flavors that no words can describe.

If you want to also feast your eyes as well as your taste buds, grab a couple of fish salad and head down south on the beach road towards My Khe Beach. As you continue your Vietnam Tours adventure this way, you will be amazed at the fantastic view of Son Tra Peninsula as you glaze at the Big Buddha situated on the opposite side. And as you savor the lingering taste of "Goi Ca" in your mouth, take a couple of pictures of you and your friends with the magnificent East Vietnam Sea in the backdrop.