Turn summer's fruit and vegetable bounty into a cooling salad.
A crisp cool salad on a sultry summer day gets you out of the hot kitchen. For a refreshing summer salad, use fresh summer fruits and vegetables with citrus dressings. Consider freezing a few of the ingredients for an extra frosty touch.
Fruit
Compose the salad with sliced peaches, plums and cherries. Add frozen blueberries right before serving. Combine 1 tablespoon of lime juice with 1/2 teaspoon of honey and 1/4 teaspoon of Dijon mustard, which gives this dressing a little bite. Another combination is chunks of melon. Try watermelon, cantaloupe and honeydew sprinkled with salt and spritzed with orange juice. The salt brings out the sweetness of the melons. Freeze a few of the melon chunks.
Vegetables
A classic combination for summer is gazpacho, a spicy soup of chopped raw vegetables served cold. Use the same ingredients to turn it into a salad by omitting the tomato juice. Chop cucumbers, red peppers, green peppers, tomatoes with red onion. Drizzle with lemon juice and olive oil. Add basil for an Italian flair or chopped cilantro for a Southwest bent. Freeze green grapes and add them right before serving.
Shrimp or Chicken
Turn a chopped salad into a meal when you don't want to cook in the kitchen. Section a red grapefruit over a bowl to save the juice. To the juice add chopped scallions, ground pepper, salt and minced garlic. Add cooked shrimp or chunks of cooked chicken to the dressing. Serve over a bed of salad greens, the grapefruit sections and sliced avocados. The avocados melt into the dressing, eliminating the need for any oil.
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