Summertime Salads and Berries

Ahh, summertime!  I eat salads all year, but the ingredients that are available in the summer are just so fresh-tasting!  I have a small garden right outside my house, so I take advantage of that as much as possible.  I am also a member of a CSA and get fresh veggies every other week.  And I also have a neighbor who is more than generous with her sizable garden.

Salads are easy to throw together.  Today, I want to share with you a few of my recent inspirations.  (For more salad and salad dressing ideas, you can view a previous post here.)

First up:  BLT salad with Caesar dressing.  This S salad consists of mixed greens, tomatoes, turkey bacon, parmesan, and homemade Caesar dressing (recipe in the above link).

BLT Salad

Here is another quick salad I came up with when I was particularly hungry - an S Greek salad.  It contains chopped romaine, cucumbers, yellow peppers, roasted red peppers, green olives, pepperoncini, sun-dried tomatoes, chicken breast, and then sprinkled with feta.  My Greek salad dressing contains red wine vinegar, olive oil, black olive tapenade (because I had some in my fridge), fresh minced garlic, a smidgen of Dijon, and cracked black pepper.

Hearty Greek Salad

Right now, strawberries are in season near me. Berries can brighten up many a salad!!  The following salad luncheon (S) contains some of that leftover Greek salad, along with a sweet and sour spinach, strawberry, and cashew salad. For the dressing, I simply combined lime juice, stevia, and olive oil.  (Keep reading for information on that smoothie in the photo).

Colorful Salad Lunch

This next yummy salad came about last night, when I arrived home at 9:20 pm after an evening of Uber driving.  I know it was late, but I was hungry.  So I dug through my fridge and came up with this S salad/late night snack:  Chopped hard boiled eggs, yellow and red peppers, olives, feta cheese, pepperoncini, sprinkled all over with fresh lime juice.  (Boiled egg time-and-sanity-saving hint:  I buy the ready-cooked two-packs of organic hard boiled eggs from Costco. So convenient!)

Late-night salad/hearty snack

Before I go, I want to share about an ingredient I discovered this week:  honeyberries (also called haskaps).  My generous neighbor has bushes that are full of them, and she let me come and pick.  The name is somewhat ironic, because they are quite tart.  I blended some of them with the limeade that I keep in my fridge (in my adorable new lemon/limeade bottle that I brought home from Israel) for a refreshing beverage that you can drink with E, S, or FP meals.  If you don't happen to have access to honeyberries, you can substitute any berry of your choice.

For the lemon or limeade, squeeze 4-5 lemons and/or limes into a bottle (I think my bottle is about a liter).  Add 4-5 doonks of stevia, fill with water, and store in the fridge.  Add fresh mint if desired. 

Honeyberries, and a smoothie made with limeade from my fridge.