Oderan Wilds Salad - Episode 17

MATT: [...]You all reconvene, collect your horses. Looking out over the dense jungle canopy ahead, you hear the welcome musical cacophony of the various jungle birds all collecting their music and sounds to the air. The moisture of the underbrush and the dull, yellowish-green glow of the sunlight that peeks through the vines and leaves. You move past the groups of individuals that live here amongst the Steps of Jrusar, the base of the jungle, the base of the spires. Follow the trails beyond civilization and begin your trek into the unknown beyond.

Campaign 3 Episode 17, "Heart-to-Heartmoor," March 17, 2022
Thanks to critrole.fandom.com for the transcript from the episode shown above.

Oderan Wilds Salad

Stick to the Honored Trails

Things are busy here at my house. We've had friends visiting, we've gone out of town, we've had routines upended! But this is exactly the recipe that I wanted to make this week. After last week's episode (and wow, what an episode!), while there was so much going on with the characters, I was really interested and continuously fascinated by the wilds. For that reason, I decided to make a salad as tribute!

I also want to preface this with the note that I did NOT like salads growing up. Regardless of dressing. I didn't start eating salads until college and then only with ranch dressing, and lots of other things that didn't necessarily add much nutritional value. Admittedly, this salad does have quite a few things that don't necessarily contribute to nutritional value, but it is really tasty and even almost fun to eat. To be honest, I was surprised at how good this salad turned out. 

Ingredients

• Garlic
• Olive Oil
• Lemon Juice
• Romaine lettuce
• Spinach
• Cabbage - shredded
• 1 carrot - shredded
• Red onion - diced (optional)
• Croutons
• Tortilla strips
• Salted sunflower seeds
• Dried cranberries & blueberries

I don't have a picture of the ingredients here because I felt the salad spoke for itself.

Directions

1. Use a garlic press to press 1-2 cloves of garlic (this will work better than dicing or chopping very small as it will be easier to distribute it, but if you don't have a garlic press, chopping it small will work). 
2. In a small bowl combine garlic, a drizzle of olive oil, and about equal part lemon juice. (If you need a measurement, start with a teaspoon of each then add more as needed to make sure you'll have enough for your salad) Add salt and pepper to taste. Set this aside, this will be your dressing.
3. Wash all of your produce - even if the bag says it's been washed, doing it one more time is always a good idea, especially because sometimes those chemicals can affect people's tummies. Better safe than sick. 
4. Create your Salad base with 1 part Romaine and 1 part spinach. Sprinkle in shredded carrot and cabbage (and red onion, if you're adding it)
5. If your croutons are large try to cut them smaller to make them easier to eat. Top salad with croutons, tortilla strips, sunflower seeds, and dried fruits.
6. Top your salad with your homemade dressing and mix well

Why did I choose these ingredients?

I wanted to include a little bit here about why I chose to include each ingredient since everything here was thoughtfully chosen.

• Romaine mostly for the green color and makes a good salad base but also related to the 'herbs' that Fearne found that were really more like weeds.
• Spinach, this is truly there to mimic the leaves of the trees as they walk through the forest - sunlight peeking through
• Carrot - for our jackalope/fey bunny friend!
• Cabbage and red onion - important colors of the jungle to give some diversity in plant life
• Croutons - the bark of the trees (especially the one that is struck by lightning!)
• Dried cranberries - the pink stone that the fey bunny had
• Dried blueberries - the blueish electricity flower that came from the tree struck by lightning
• Tortilla strips and sunflower seeds - represent the teeth and tentacles of the... whatever that was at the end of the episode.

Tips, Suggestions, and Substitutions

Tips & Suggestions

• If you haven't invested in a salad spinner, it's a really great way to wash and store leafy greens - I highly recommend it. 
• I have here to make the dressing first so that the ingredients get some time to really relax with each other. I typically only make 1 serving of dressing as needed, but you could make a large amount ahead of time!
• You could also add a gummy bear for the little fairy/pixie/lure at the end and just hide it somewhere in the salad, or eat it after. I didn't have any (and also forgot to get them, but also thought it might be... weird in a salad), but if you try this, please let me know!!!

Substitutions

• I know there are edible flowers, while I did really want to find some, but I ran out of time. But maybe those would make a good addition to this salad? (Please do research if you're interested in this, don't eat poison, thanks).
• If you are the type of person who enjoys protein in your salad, adding some grilled chicken is a good start, or turkey as well, both of these should fit in and add good flavors
• There are a lot of different flavors of croutons, feel free to pick your favorites! 
• Swapping out different dried fruits could be an option if you have some favorites.
• If you are a fan of other herbs and you have some fresh ones on hand, you could add them to your salad dressing to deepen the flavor profile. 

In Conclusion...

I sort of expected to eat this and go "yep this is a salad, good job." But... it actually turned out better than that. I think it was the fresh garlic that really brought the flavors home. I've also never had dried fruit in a salad and was expecting to not like it, but I was wrong about that too! Because there were so many interesting things going on here, every bite was typically different from the one before, and it ended up being really good! This recipe is original to me. Obviously, I didn't think of salads, but this is one of my favorite ways to do salad dressing now - olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and adding some sort of flavoring (garlic, rosemary, etc, or an infused olive oil instead). And it was really fun having the ingredients all fit the theme to create something that matched the episode. And the result is a fun crunchy salad that, like the wilds themselves, is a bit unexpected in every bite.

Are you a salad fan? What would you add to your Oderan Wilds salad? What do you think of the toppings that I added here? I'd love to hear from you so please, if you have any questions or suggestions, or just wanna say hi, you can do all of that in the comments below, or, if you would prefer, you can leave that info on Pinterest or Twitter! Thanks for visiting, have a great weekend and don't forget to love each other. Is it Thursday, yet?

You gather some plants, you're like, "Oh, these are herbs," and you pull them together and start looking at them and realize, or they're just weeds. But they're green.