101 Quick Summer Salads

Apple Fennel Salad

You can see the small black grains
of mustard from the vinaigrette dressing

Years ago the New York Times published 101 Quick Summer Salads.

From that 101 salads, Rebecca continues to make two: the carrot, blueberry, toasted sunflower seed salad and the fennel apple salad. Rebecca had put them together before Moiya and Dave came to visit in Victoria. There is nothing like a quick salad that comes out of the fridge, especially when it is gourmet quality, so Moiya kept asking for the recipe. Rebecca would give it to her, but the ingredients are never measured in the hardcopy of these salads that are printed off. How can you give over a recipe that has no measurements. A person is left to put in the amount they choose. And the recipes are mostly 3 ingredients, so with the first salad, it kind of depends on the ratio you like your blueberries to your carrots, and what kind of crunch are you looking for in your toasted sunflower seeds.

Even the dressing takes a little thought. For the salad above, it is use a vinaigrette and add some grainy mustard. Constructing salad dressings seems to be second hand to Rebecca. She learned to do it when she was clerking in Ottawa which is many years ago and it is a talent that has not been lost. I am still pulling up a recipe on the internet while she has the ingredients put together and is putting it on the salad.  I finally got some ingredients up on the Larch Kitchens Blog for Moiya so use.

Over the years Rebecca has stayed with her two top picks. I decided to try to work my way through at least 80% of the salads, since I am cooking alone now and it is better to decide before I get to the grocery store what ingredients I will use. I love the search engine on my computer. I have cans of tuna fish and so I am making every salad in that list that takes tuna. Next I am going to make my way through everything that takes carrots. And then all the salads that call for red onions, for I have some of those in the pantry. What better way to figure out what to have for supper, since I have no one to whom I can ask, "What would you like for supper".

So just a note to Rebecca, of the salads for this week, #59 is good but #60 is better. Mix chopped apples, halved seedless grapes, chopped red onion, olive oil, a bit of cumin and black pepper. Go light on the red onion. I put in more than a bit of cumin. Yum.

Arta