Twin Mama Wama

Confession: I have an affinity for fast food. Luckily, I suppose, lately I don’t leave the house much so I don’t have the opportunity to be tempted. But when my friend Aprill posted a picture of the salad she made from Whole Kitchen Sink that’s actually called ‘Big Mac Salad’ I was sold. Below I adapted the recipe a bit because I am not paleo and I used what my family likes and what I had on hand. It did not disappoint! I’ll also show you how I adapted it for my toddlers, who each got Clean Plate Club ???

Beef Ingredients:

• 1 lb ground beef
• salt and pepper
• 1 tsp garlic salt
• 3 TBS pickle juice
• Hefty squirt of mustard
• Hefty squirt of ketchup

For the salad:

• 1 heart of Romaine lettuce, washed, dried and chopped
• Spinach (amount of choice) washed, dried and chopped
• 1/2 of a tomato of choice, diced
• 2 mini cucumbers, diced
• 1 cup diced pickles (for salad for 5 people but add amount to your taste. I was most excited about the pickles and added a lot. I noticed a bunch uneaten on my husband’s plate though haha)
• Thousand island dressing, to taste
• Crunch factor. I omitted because I couldn’t reach the croutons and was too lazy to find something to climb on to get them. This was a mistake. I missed a nice bread crunch in this salad. I can also see crushed up tortilla chips, or as my friend Mel suggested, a nice bunch of Doritos, working out deliciously.

Directions:

1. Season beef with salt, pepper and garlic salt. Crumble and brown. Drain grease.
2. Add the pickle juice, mustard and ketchup. I added way more pickle juice than the original recipe and it was delicious. I added more mustard than ketchup. Play around, taste as you go, make it your own. At the end of cooking I hit it with more salt and pepper, too. The beef was insanely delicious.
3. Assemble the salad. My Su Chef of the evening was Colby. He chopped the pickles, cucumbers and spinach which I added to the romaine I chopped. Then I added the tomato, which I diced finely in hopes the kiddos wouldn’t pick it out (success!). The original recipe calls for raw red onion, which I omitted because my family doesn’t care for them. If I was adding onion I would add a sweet white onion.
4. Dress the salad to taste with Thousand Island and add your crunch factor.
5. Enjoy the shit out of this beaut of a salad.

My kiddos each have different tastes so I had to think about how to make this meal uniform and edible for all, because they notice any differences on plates, and I am not in the business of making 5 separate meals. So I turned theirs into tacos! A fan favorite; they ate the whole thing.

Since this was a new kind of taco, I made sure to have something I knew they’d gobble up on the plate (last night’s pasta with butter and riced veggies) as well as extra cucumbers and pickles. For dessert we made brownies. I also ate those at 2am. And 4:30am.

How cute is my little helper? I can’t believe how fast my babes are growing. Please let me know below how you like Big Mac Salad!