Summer Salads

We eat salad at least four to five times a week all year long.  Salads are our biggest side dish and sometimes they are even our meals, say for instance Taco Salad or Cobb Salad, especially during the summer when it is hot outside.  A crisp bed of lettuce with some delicious toppings is nice and refreshing compared to a hot, heavy entrée. 

I will typically go to the grocery store about every ten days to pick up fresh produce.  Three items always seem to be on my shopping list – spinach, lettuce and cabbage.  I love to mix equal amounts of all three of these things for what I like to call the “base” of a good garden salad.  After that is mixed up in a large bowl the sky is the limit as far as what else I put on it. 

 

The "base" of our salads - spinach, lettuce, shredded cabbage.

I always shoot for “three”.  Three additional items to top the greens and they are almost always vegetables.  Then if it is a main course salad I will add on meat, cheese and/or hard boiled eggs. 

Salad dressings are last, but certainly not least, and I make them from scratched 90% of the time.  My girls are learning to make them now too and I always appreciate the extra help in the kitchen. 

Do you find you eat more salads when the weather gets warmer?  Have a favorite salad dressing recipe you’d like to share?