So… given my last few posts, this should not come as a surprise… we have not been cooking as much as we were this winter/spring. AT least, not formally cooking. See… it’s summer in Arizona, summer in Phoenix to be more precise which means there have only been a handful of days under 105. When it’s that hot out, no one particularly wants to cook in the traditional sense of turning on the oven or stove. Crock pot meals? Maybe. Grilling? If you wait until the sun goes down I guess. But once it creeps closer to 110 you don’t even want that. In fact, most of the time we haven’t even wanted hot food that someone else makes for us. You know what we’ve been eating a lot of? Smoothies, yogurt with fruit, straight up ice cream or popsicles… and if you want something less sweet and more sustaining then nothing beats a good summer salad. And I don’t mean those sad salads that seem to always feature in those stock footage of ladies laughing while they eat it- the ones that are basically big bowls of lettuce with a tomato thrown in for color contrast. Nope. That salad looks dry and sad. I’m talking substantial salads with lots of variety.

The great things about salads is you can basically throw almost anything you have together and with the right dressing it will probably be a decent salad. Not eating much meat, we try to get a little creative with protein if we are having this kind of salad for our main meal. A favorite around here recently has been this quinoa salad recipe. We have a few adjustments to make it our own- we omit the frozen corn and add some avocado and hot sauce.

What’s your favorite sumer salad? And anyone know of easy ways to prep salads ahead of time? Obviously lettuce does not stay good very long, and in fact we are learning that we need to make half the recipe most of the time because after a day or so there’s no hope for leftovers staying well- even if we keep the dressing on the side. I’m pretty sure next we’ll try some cold noodle salads in hopes that they will stay leftover options longer. Other than that, salads are a huge win for us. Especially since if I’m having a queasy day I don’t have to worry about eating them while they’re hot to get the full flavor!