Anything Slaw

You know how everyone has a few guilty pleasure foods?

On a three week soils field trip, my professor asked the students in charge of buying food/drinks to get him a pack of Coors Light.  I remember we thought he was joking (cause that beer is groooooooooss).  He said he was serious, that on hot, dirty, no shower trips like that he liked that beer.  He also wanted Hormel chili in a can...as in, to eat it out of the can. 

As for me, well, I have a few guilty pleasure foods: store-brand boxed fudge brownie mix (made into brownies, obviously), chocolate donettes, and slaw.  There's this BBQ place down near Hunstville, Alabama and my grandparents used to get us take out dinner there sometimes when we visited.  This place served the BEST slaw.  It wasn't creamy at all, more of a vinegar based dressing that was the perfect combination of sweet and tangy.  The cabbage wasn't sliced or chopped, more like ground up into teeny weeny pieces.  Dang, so good.  And yes, I even love that overly oniony and too-much-mayo KFC slaw.  Creamy and crunchy?  Yes please.

I'm all for making a version of what you want with the ingredients you have on hand.  So yesterday I made a big bowl of slaw using a bunch of random stuff from our CSA basket.  Traditionally, slaws are "cole" based (brassica family: cabbage, broccoli, etc.) but really, you can put anything you want into a slaw.  Jalapenos or bell peppers, tomatoes, celery, fresh herbs, fresh or dried ginger, any greens (spinach, collards, turnips, mustard, broccoli, beets), jicama, and fennel would all be delicious.

Here I used spring onions, radishes, kohlrabi, broccoli, carrot, and turnip.

I also used a bunch of Russian kale, ribs and all.

I washed and spin-dried everything, then chopped it up into a bowl.

For the dressing I used a dollop each of mayo and plain yogurt (I personally like the fatty mayo for my slaw,  but all yogurt would be good, too), a few table spoons each of sugar, rice vinegar, and lemon juice, plus a touch of salt and tons of black pepper. 

I tossed the slaw in the dressing.

Then tasted it, knowing it would only taste better after sitting until the next day.

It was really quite tasty.  We took it in our picnic lunch that we ate after a morning of weeding the strawberry field at our CSA's farm.  It was cool, crunchy break after a hot morning of manual labor.  I also ate a huge bowl of it with my lunch at work today.  Mmmmm, slaw.