Can you eat just coleslaw for dinner?

I can.

You can too if you want, I won’t tell. Here’s how you do it.

First, spend your afternoon at a child’s birthday party that you didn’t intend to stay at. When your sometimes-shy-sometimes-not 5 year old persuades/begs you to stay because today she’s feeling shy, you stay.

But that means instead of heading home for a couple hours to prepare a real dinner and then coming back later to pick them both up, you sit around chatting with some of the other moms who stayed too, snacking on pretzel sticks and a particularly beautiful fruit salad.

When you get home you discover that you aren’t exactly hungry but aren’t exactly full either. The kids aren’t hungry and the husband isn’t terribly famished but is almost always willing to eat… what to do, what to do?

This is when you stand in your kitchen for a minute looking around and then make the executive decision to whip up some coleslaw and call it dinner.

Thanks to a little Thanksgiving menu planning last week, I had a sudden hankering for coleslaw. I bought two bags of shredded cabbage on Friday when I decided that I needed a three week sneak peek. MUST. EAT. COLESLAW. NOW.

Super Simple Coleslaw

Two 1 pound bags of shredded cabbage
a couple of shredded carrots
one diced onion
a half cup of mayo (or canola oil, I used mayo today because I happened to have some)
3/4 c of apple cider vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

That’s it. Dump everything into a big mixing bowl and stir and stir and stir some more. Leave it in the fridge for a bit to soak up the flavors, or eat a little bowl immediately if you must. (I must!)

Years ago I use buy a pre-made “coleslaw dressing” to pour over the vegetables, but then I figured out it really wasn’t that complicated to do myself with ingredients I usually have on hand. I especially liked that I was saving us from all the added preservatives and flavor enhancers that come along as a special bonus with the ease of having some company put it together for me.

So that’s how you eat coleslaw for dinner. And it’ll be even better by tomorrow morning when I eat some for breakfast.