Chopped Salad and Summer Resolutions

If any dish represents my summer thus far, it's this one. A quick, mish-mash, scrounge-around-and-make-it-yummy salad. Fresh, filling, easy, quick. Bonus: this salad also incorporates my new-found love of queso fresco. Thank you, SuperTarget, for bringing that lovely number into my world.

I found this recipe on Smitten Kitchen, one of my fav food blogs; every recipe of hers is a winner. But I especially love recipes that encourage you to mix it up and this salad basically forces you to use your creativity.  As Einstein said, creativity is intelligence having fun.  I threw in radishes, fennel, corn, carrots, sunflower seeds, queso fresco, and a heap of barley and served it over lettuce.  I probably broke a few food combo rules in the process (fennel and corn? sunflower seeds and queso fresco?) but it's a perfect metaphor for my favorite way to cook: throw it together, try something new, see if it works...and it'll probably be edible regardless.  I'll admit this kitchen philosophy has brought about a few disasters - a much-too-oniony pumpkin soup and a terrible curried pheasant on Christmas Eve come to mind - but to be honest, even the terrible dinners become fond memories.

It's the end of July already. The raspberries and cherries are done; we're starting to see the blessed cukes and tomatoes now. My basil didn't turn out great this year, but thankfully our CSA share has been loading us up on my favorite herb. The squash, as always, is bountiful.

But aside from gardening, there are a few very specific things I still need to do with my summer before the cold winds blow in:

- Take Ben to the waterslide park.
- Go camping at Cross Ranch.
- Grill bbq ribs.
- Campfires. The more, the better.
- Buy some pie irons for the campfires mentioned above.
- Rollerblade the bike trail a few more times.
- Spend one long, languid day pontooning on the river.  Bring extra Leinie's summer shandy.

Now away from computer!  Time to enjoy these days of pure summer.

For the chopped salad recipe, jump over here to Smitten Kitchen.