Simple Summer Salads

Simple Summer Salads... try saying that one five times fast! Let me pretense this whole post by commenting on the temperature outside. It was 113 (degrees F) the other day, 112 today and is supposed to be about the same or maybe 111 or 110 (does that even matter?) for the next few days. Did I mention never a cloud in the sky (until monsoon season)? Then they call it "cooling down" to the 107's range through the week, and anything above 105 is considered hot. And yes it's a dry heat, and yes I'd rather have this than humidity or coldness, and no I am not the local forcaster.

Based on the conditions and it's not even July/August yet, I have primarily feasting on the following: fresh fruit smoothies, cereal, ice cream and fruit salad. I decided to get away from some of that, for dinner at least, and whipped up some summer salads that were nice and cool. First you will see a return of the pasta salad. It's a vinaigrette with simple spices, olive oil, red wine vinegar and cucumbers and carrots. Everything's organic except for the olive oil (too costly to buy for now) and the cuc's aren't organic. I had a personal battle at the store today, and decided to just go for it. You can see that I washed and scrubbed it like it fell in the toilet or something (would that have been better than eating conventional produce?!) and I even peeled part of the skin. I did leave some skin on in the case that there may be lingering vitamins and minerals under the waxiness and crap. Anyway, this is what it looks like. Yum.
I made another simple summer salad to go with the pasta salad. This one's a simple one because I went for it and bought a bag (well, 2) of Newman's Organics spring mix. I think there is about 20 kinds of greens in here and "three times washed". Sweet. I took the bag of spring mix, tossed it with the leftover carrots and cuc's from the other salad, added some walnuts and called it good. The hardest part about this meal was deciding on a dressing. Then got Ray involved and he wanted some sort of mustard-y kind. I thumbed through 10 old magazines of Veggie Life and VT... and then found my brain and picked up The Everyday Vegan & Vive le Vegan. I decided to make Dreena's "Simple Cider Vinaigrette" which has apple cider vinegar, dijon mustard, maple syrup and a few other secret ingredients. It was simple to make and tasted bold and vinegary, just the way I like my salads, but with a sweet hint. Overall, this meal was tasty, refreshing, simple, and great for summer.