Summer! A perfect time for salads. You avoid cooking heat. You can suit different tastes since there are many kinds of salads. You can use little bits of greens if you have a garden, or use up left-overs.
Throw a variety of vegetables, a starch like cooked potato, rice, bread croutons, or corn, and some protein rich foods like nuts, beans, seeds, or diced veggie meat together. You can add pieces of dried or fresh fruit. Mix and top it with your choice of dressing. You have a balanced meal, rich in nutritional value, or a beginning or side dish.
Popular salads include Waldorf salad. Make it by chunking a cored apple or two into bite size pieces. Add a couple of cleaned, scraped, and diced stalks of celery, some walnut pieces (substitute seeds like sunflower seeds if you can’t use walnuts), and a few tablespoons of mayonnaise. Also popular is carrot salad. Mix shredded carrot (stores sell carrots already shredded if you don’t use a shredder) with a lesser amount of raisins and a tablespoon or two of mayonnaise. There are many types of potato salad, cole slaw, and salads featuring small chunks of a vegetable like raw broccoli mixed with some chopped sweet onion, nuts such as pieces of cashew, and enough salad dressing or mayonnaise to mix. There are bean salads, and corn and bean salads. Possibilities are endless. Make what you like and try some new ones.
Will the kids eat them? Here are some possibilities to engage them: Let them pick out some salad ingredients they want at the store or at home. Give them a job to do like mixing up the salad. Let them add toppings to the salad bowl. Set out ingredients in “salad bar” fashion. Let them put together their own salad, as people do at many restaurants. You may discover they like olives or pickled beets. They sometimes surprise you. Happy Salad Days!
