Summer Salad Inspiration

Photo from NYTimes.com

As a loyal follower of The New York Times‘s Mark Bittman, I was delighted to discover that he recently compiled an extensive list of summer salad ideas…101 to be exact. If you can’t find summer salad inspiration among this mouth-watering collection, I question whether you have taste buds. My dilemma is choosing which one to try first! While some of the combinations might strike you as strange, I deem them “innovative.” Which ones would you try? What’s the wackiest salad you’ve ever created?

I am off to the lake in a few minutes, so I’ll share a few pictures before I depart:

Thursday

Coconut fix: check.

choco-berry shake with strawberries, cocoa mix, chocolate HempShake, soymilk, & coconut

Friday

I skipped out on class this morning, as the professor had announced that we would be “reading aloud from the textbook” for today’s session. Uh, no thanks. While reading and oral expression exercises are important, I’m not sure that they’re terribly necessary for chemistry. Anyway, as a result of my unexpectedly open schedule, I had a bit more time to prepare my breakfast this morning. These cottage cheese cups never cease to please my palate.

whole wheat mini bagel with Rachel's Cucumber Dill Cottage Cheese, fresh dill & pine nuts; tomato (from the garden); cucumber; cantaloupe

after assembly

…Then I thought some kombucha was necessary. This was a tasty flavor, and it made me have some pretty killer burps. Major plus in my book.

Cosmic Cranberry

For lunch, I made a dish I’ve made before–a re-vamped version of a Clean Eating recipe for Caribbean Tuna Salad. As you can see, I replaced the tuna with chickpeas–just as good!  I was feeling lazy, so I used prepared peanut sauce instead of making my own…I was hangry! At least the cilantro was garden-fresh.

Caribbean Chickpea Salad with peanut sauce, chickpeas, red bell pepper, & mango; oat bran pita

Well, I better pack up for the lake. Have a lovely weekend!

Filed under: Meals

18 Responses to “Summer Salad Inspiration”

1. Shelby, on July 24th, 2009 at 5:59 pm Said:

   I LOVE the salad ideas! My favorite salad is one with tons of avocado in it!

2. JB, on July 24th, 2009 at 6:11 pm Said:

   mmmm, the chickpea salad looks lovely. makes me think of something i’d want to eat if i were on a tropical island! not that i don’t already want to eat it right here in my own house, haha. have a super fun time at the lake! lucky girl!

   -JB
   http://cardiovegsular.wordpress.com

3. keri410, on July 24th, 2009 at 8:05 pm Said:

   OH so jealous you get to go to a lake!

   LOVE the salad ideas… it’s so true that you can add just about ANYTHING to a salad that might sound good to you and make it amazing! Never tried rachel’s, but I LOVE CC! That’s a creative bagel lunch!

   Have a great weekend!

4. *Andrea*, on July 24th, 2009 at 8:05 pm Said:

   i love that kombucha flavor.. haven’t met one i dislike yet they are so expensive yet i still convince myself to buy one several times a week lol

5. Anna, on July 24th, 2009 at 9:31 pm Said:

   Hmmm wackiest salad… I’m not sure I can think of anything wacky, but I love fruit + in salads! So good.

   Would you believe I’ve still never tried a kombucha?

6. Sarah (LovIN My Tummy), on July 24th, 2009 at 10:57 pm Said:

   Dude, best idea ever: Hugh Jass salad cookbook!!! How cool would that be?

7. Learning To Relove, on July 25th, 2009 at 2:14 am Said:

   the fresh and delcious breakfast really looks like something amazinggg! And wow 101 great summer salads! How fun to have so many new recipes to whip up

8. flower, on July 25th, 2009 at 2:30 am Said:

   I love the salad ideas, what a great link, thanks for sharing

9. coco, on July 25th, 2009 at 5:20 am Said:

   I saw the same article about salad…. is it crazy? 101 recipes!!! I can’t wait to try some of them, they look pretty awesome!

10. Mitri, on July 25th, 2009 at 6:57 am Said:

    Ahh! I love fresh salads full of variety. I can’t wait to take notes from that article Thanks so much for posting it.

    As for your cottage oats questions:

    For hot oats, I stir the cottage cheese in after I’ve finished cooking (which for me is microwaving). If you include the cottage cheese beforehand, it starts to melt the cheese so that it’s stringy just like if you were eating mozzarella off a pizza. That’d be okay for savory oats I guess, but not for standard breakfast oats IMO.

    For cold/summer/Swiss oats, I include the cottage cheese from the beginning and let it sit with the oats overnight. Since there is no heat involved in that, the cheese doesn’t have a chance to melt. Instead, it provides extra moisture for the oats to soak up in the fridge and leaves creamy creamy goodness.

    Hope that helps!

11. veganfritz, on July 25th, 2009 at 7:48 am Said:

    101 salads?! I like some of those grain salads there. Whenever I make a salad it’s usually a clean out the fridge salad so I suppose it gets pretty wacky but not in my eyes – I just see it as food.

12. Ruby Red, on July 25th, 2009 at 8:56 am Said:

    Thanks for the NY Times link – I hadn’t seen that yet!

    I wouldn’t consider these salads overly wacky, but at Whole Foods I’ll just take a container and throw in whatever looks good, hot or cold. Yes, it is all in the same container, but I don’t really make an effort of mixing it, but some flavas do get mixed. I really love your Caribbean salad – the mango and red bells sound sooo fresh and wonderlicious with peanut sauce!

13. april, on July 25th, 2009 at 11:04 am Said:

    Great idea for the salad!

    Kombocha does have a way of making some burps! haha

14. Christina, on July 25th, 2009 at 6:41 pm Said:

    Thanks for posting that link. I love salads and all the ideas are great! The one that stood out the most though was the black bean one that’s served in avocado shells.

15. Maria, on July 25th, 2009 at 10:08 pm Said:

    Yum yum, the Caribbean chick pea salad looks absolutely divine! Those are some great flavors going on in there

    Oooh, I love that cottage cheese-pine nut-cucumber-dill combo on the bagel. So pretty too, haha!

    I was skimming through that salad list, and smoked tofu caught my eye. That sounds like it would be awesome in a salad!

16. Jessica (jesslikesithot), on July 26th, 2009 at 2:29 am Said:

    Hope you’re having a fun weekend!!

    I gotta stock up on the rachel’s cottage cheese, I always love the concoctions you whip up with them!

17. janetha, on July 26th, 2009 at 2:47 am Said:

    i love that snacky plate! looks tasty and fun to eat. i made a spaghetti sauce salad once, it was weird but good!

18. Kailey, on July 26th, 2009 at 11:57 am Said:

    wow I am seriously loving your pretty breakfast platter Those mini bagels are my favorite!

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