Greetings Treat-A-Weekers,

Have you missed me? I hope so! I was MIA from the blog because I was on a summer holiday with my family.  Clearly, I enjoyed it a little too much because I came back to Boston having gained 4 pounds! Ice cream, pasta and throwing caution to the wind will do that to you, I guess.  I don’t regret a single delicious thing I ate, but I am ready to get serious about losing those unwanted vacation pounds and eating healthier.  Which brings me to a topic that for decades I could never classify as a treat – salad! Growing up we ate two types of salad – there was an Indian style salad which consisted of diced tomatoes, onions and cucumbers with some cilantro, olive oil, salt and pepper and vinegar (my Mom would throw this together as a refreshing side with Indian food) or an iceberg lettuce based bland thing with carrots that we would eat with whatever bottled dressing we had in the fridge.  The tomato/cucumber salad was tasty, but the other things at my Mom’s dinner table were so much more flavorful and appealing that I generally left it untouched.  No comment on Iceberg lettuce salad.  Not eating salad wasn’t a problem for me as a child or even in my twenties because I was genetically blessed to not need to watch what I ate lest there be weight consequences until I hit 30.

And luckily for me, when I was around 30, I got to know my English sister-in-law Sofia and her delicious salads.  When my husband and I first married, we would visit my British in-laws around once a year and every time I ate dinner with Sofia and her family, she had created some crazy tasty salad.  My husband and I would literally battle each other for the last few pieces of salad in the bowl…and both of us are/were carnivores!  I would always ask Sof what she put in the salad, how she made it and she would generally respond with something to the effect of, “I just threw in whatever we had in the fridge.”  This did not compute for me because her salads would always incorporate something unexpected and tasty — often roasted vegetables, and/or toasted nuts, sometimes the spicy, tasty, never-eaten-by-me-before arugula (or rocket as she and the Brits call it), a fresh herb or two and they were always topped with some sort of homemade, healthy, light and flavorful salad dressing…these were not ingredients I had hanging around in our fridge at the time!   As the years have passed, Sofia has become known for her delicious salads in her circle — whenever family or friends have her over and she asks what she can bring, they say, salad, of course!  Think I am exaggerating about her salad culinary prowess? Well, we just visited Sofia and family a few weeks ago and she came up with a sophisticated concoction for dinner featuring grilled salmon, boiled eggs, seasoned asparagus, crisp cucumbers and spinach that is pictured below.  As my son says, “it was yum.”

Anyway, my takeaways from Sofia’s salad handiwork were/are: (1) salads can be utterly delicious and interesting and tasty in addition to just being good for you; (2) one needs to include an unexpected item or items (eg roast veg, toasted nuts, crumbled goat cheese) factor in the salad ideally to elevate it to something more special/tasty then the average sad salad fare; and (3) and this is the most important one, make your own dressing.  If you do nothing else, making your own dressing can elevate the salad to tasty/gourmet status AND in the words of Daphne Oz, whose recipe I will provide below, “making your own dressing will cut out unnecessary sodium and sugar.”  Exhibit A in the “homemade dressing makes every salad good”, we had friends for brunch over yesterday and I threw together a very simple salad to serve with all the carby goodness on offer (vegetable quiche, pancakes, bagels, croissants etc.) I had a pack of “spring mix” greens in the fridge and to that I added chopped bell pepper, grape tomatoes and cucumber.  Nothing special, but then I amped it up by making an easy dressing that goes with most every salad that doesn’t have fruit in it…(NB: Jamie Oliver has some great, easy homemade salad dressing recipes that you can always look up, FYI).  The gist of this simple dressing is:

olive oil; whole grain mustard; regular Dijon mustard (if you are not a mustard lover, you can leave this type out); sea salt; fresh ground pepper; fresh lemon juice. The general rule I go by is two times as much oil as citrus/vinegar…eg, If I put in 4 tbsps olive oil, I would include 2 tbsps lemon juice in the dressing; add 1 tablespoon of whole grain dijon mustard and salt and pepper to taste and there you have it – something quick and yummy and healthy to add to any meal.  And, tonight I am going to use some of the leftover dressing on arugula and add some grilled salmon for my dinner.  Easy peasy, as Jamie Oliver always says…

Below are two recipes for quick, easy, tasty summer salads that I really enjoy.

Ina Garten’s Fresh Corn Salad Recipe

I love to make this when the kids want corn on the cob– I give them their corn cobs, skewers to hold them and butter and then I make this salad for any adults at the table to satisfy their corn quota for the evening – it is a hit and tastes delicious with any grilled food.