Recipe Corner: A Fresh & Easy Summer Salad

It's impossible to not love summer. School and the sun are out, pools and patios are open and everyone seems just a little more relaxed. Not to mention, your local farmer's market and grocery store are starting to pop with the colorful (and delicious) fruits and veggies of the season.

I'm not a big traditional salad person - lettuce is hard to keep on a fork, it needs usually-bad-for-you dressing to give it flavor and sometimes, no matter how much you scrub the leaves before tossing them in a bowl, they retain a faint parfum de dirt. Ick.

I'll eat salad, but I'd rather sauté some zucchini, steam some green beans or just chomp on carrots and hummus to get my vegetables. There is one salad I can never get enough of, however, and summer is the perfect time of year for it. (My mom and I have been making this once a week since I arrived in Arizona. Even my dad, who usually denounces veggies as "rabbit food," likes it!)

Fresh & Easy Summer Salad

Servings: 4-6 as a side salad, 2-3 as a main course
Preparation Time: 5-10 minutes
Cooking Time: None!
Difficulty: Easy. If you can wield a knife and sprinkle cheese, you're good to go.

Ingredients:

2 tomatoes (I tend to buy on-the-vine, but have also made this with cherry tomatoes, and any kind will work)
1 large cucumber
1/4 cup crumbled feta

Optional ingredients, to taste:

basil
brown rice
cous cous
minced garlic
chopped onion
tofu
extra virgin olive oil
Greek dressing
(kalamata) olives

Directions:

1. Wash tomatoes and cucumber.
2. Cut tomatoes and cucumber as desired (For me this means removing the tomato seeds and chopping the tomatoes into small pieces. I don't mind the cucumber skin but my mom doesn't like it or the seeds, so we've been peeling and chopping those too.)
3. Combine tomatoes and cucumber, add feta and serve!

My two favorite things about this salad (other than the fact that it's delicious) are:

1. It has so much natural moisture and flavor that it doesn't need dressing.
2. You can toss pretty much anything into it and it will continue to be fantastic.

If a salad isn't edible for you without dressing, Greek dressing, balsamic or just plain extra virgin olive oil go well with it. You can toss it onto a serving of rice or mix it up with some cous cous (which takes all of about 5 minutes to cook) to make a more substantial meal. I've also added leftover sautéed tofu (cubed, extra firm), which was good and would probably make a great addition to the cous cous dish. My mom and I added minced garlic once, which, if you're a garlic lover, is great. If you like a milder garlic flavor, try browning a minced clove of garlic in olive oil first, then adding it to the salad once it's cool. Or for an easier way to add spice, just sprinkle everything with basil before you toss the vegetables, either a few freshly minced leaves or a few shakes of a can.

Of course, with cucumber in the house, I start thinking about cucumber-and-cream-cheese sandwiches, which my mom used to make for me in the summer when I was a kid...

What are some of your easy summer favorites?