comment icon 68 more comments And I am not mad that this version includes spicy jalapeño garlic shrimp, chopped carrots and edamame, roasted cashews, baby spinach, and the lightest, crispiest, most addicting little golden brown wonton strips PLUS (wait for it…) a garlic-lime-herb-packed tangy dressing. One thing real quick: I live for dressing. In my contemplative food life, I ask deep questions like: what is a salad without a knockout dressing? Answer: it is nothing. Dressing dressing dressing dressing dressing. Flavor flavor flavor flavor flavor. Lime lime lime. Garlic garlic garlic. Herbssss. This salad is SO super crunchy, flavor-loaded, and delicious. I seriously have no interest in messing around with salads unless they are DAAAAAANG good, and this one passes all my tests for the yum factor. Salad angels. They be singing. I’m also hearing the springtime weather angels singing (together with the salad angels, obvi) because it’s basically been a steamy tropical paradise here in Minnesota this week. 60 degrees and sunny – SAY WHAT? The amount of joy I get from having the sun warm my face and arms while just sitting on our front steps is sort of alarming. Generally speaking, I don’t love spring – if we’re being honest, it’s pretty ugly with all that snow melting into dirt puddles, revealing the brown soggy grass underneath, and I’m always always always either wishing I was wearing a T-shirt instead of a sweater, or wishing for sunglasses instead of my thickest winter jacket, or wishing I hadn’t pulled the flats-without-socks move so early in the year – but other than all that stuff that I don’t love about spring, there is a big part of it that I do love. Primarily these are the things involving babies, dogs, sunshine, and happy neighbors cracking their windows and coming out of Winter Hibernation. Minnesota is such a fun place to live in the spring because you can literally watch everyone coming back to life again. Also, the new daylight hours? They were made for my procrastinator, always late lifestyle, which usually involves a superfast (read: short) run around the lake, ehhhrrr, the block, whatever – at THE VERY LAST POSSIBLE SECOND OF DAYLIGHT and settling in for dinner sometime around 9pm. The late person schedule not something I’m necessarily proud of, but it’s my life right now, and it just jives so much better with the newly adjusted daylight hours. So welcome, Spring Daylight, sustainer of happiness, giver of energy, joy of my soul. ♡ Thank you for allowing me to be more of my late schedule self. Now that it’s spring and you can still take pictures of your dinner in daylight (wheee!), please make this crunchy, colorful, flavor-packed party of a shrimp salad and send me a picture of you. Or the salad. Or the spring sun. Or all three together – oh my goodness, the amount of perfect in that combination is out of control. Carry on, Salad Lovers! PS. I am calling this a Thai salad just to give some indication that there is Asian flavor in the house, but it’s really a little bit of everything – between the mint, the jalapeño and serrano, the parsley, the cilantro, the edamame, and the wonton strips, we’re crossing lots of borders here. Salad flavor mashup! 4.9 from 16 reviews
