Hearty Salads

As I said last week, the up and down weather makes it difficult for me to figure out what to cook each night, but one of the 'themes' in our meals this past week has been salads that use veggies other than lettuce since the lettuce is limited right now. Vegetables stand up to more robust dressings which are a nice change from the simple vinaigrettes that are my normal go-tos. So try a few of them. Below is some of what I did this past week:

Eggplant, peppers, onions - grilled them all - I figure the eggplants and peppers won't be around much longer so I should enjoy the tasty summer veggies while I can. I made an Asian style dressing for the leftovers and added to brown rice for a tasty side dish salad.

Carrots, edamame, onion, garlic, cilantro - made the Edamame and Carrot Salad with Rice Vinegar recipe on this site. It was a nice change of pace since most of what we had been eating as salads lately were tomato based.

Eggplant, hot pepper, onion, garlic, basil, mint - made the Thai-Style Grilled Eggplant Salad recipe from this site. Since we have the hot peppers, I used them instead of the red pepper flakes.

Arugula - we LOVE arugula! The simplest way to make it into a salad is to rough chop or tear it, cut some cherry tomatoes in half and place both into a bowl. Put a little salt and pepper into the bowl, squeeze fresh lemon juice to taste and drizzle a good quality olive oil into the bowl - it doesn't need much. Mix well, but gently because arugula bruises easily and enjoy!

Kale - made Kale Caesar Salad and served sliced, leftover steak on top of it. Yum!

Please share how you enjoyed your harvest by emailing me at lindadansbury@comcast.net and please put Anchor Run in the subject line.