Reading Farmgirl Susan's article about eating Greek salad and reading in the kitchen (http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977072165) reminded me of a similar salad I used to make. I went to make it yesterday but I realized I didn't have all of the ingredients I'd usually use, so I improvised and came up with a different (and perhaps better) version of my old standby. Having a kitchen full of farmers' market goodies didn't hurt either.
It started pretty straightforward:
2 cups mixed greens or your favorite lettuce
handfull of grape tomatoes, halved
1 lemon cucumber (new farmer's market find! the one I used was about the size of a baseball)
healthy sprinkle of feta cheese
handful of chopped fresh basil leaves (thanks for the idea Susan!)
Then I realized that was all of the standard stuff I had, so I looked around for more compatible goodies and came up with...
about 1/3 cup of brown rice
half of a ripe avocado, peeled, seeded and chopped
juice of half of a lemon
balsamic vinaigrette to taste
Toss together and enjoy! If I had red bell peppers, red onion or kalamata olives, they would have made it in too. As it was, it was pretty light, very flavorful, and pretty darn healthy. It came together in under 5 minutes (as long as you have leftover rice you can quickly re-heat) and it made good use of some of my farmers' market loot. And it had avocado, and as far as I'm concerned, that makes everything better!
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Comments: 12
Yay, a new lemon cucumber lover! Lemon cucumbers are the best. I discovered them about 15 years ago at a farmers' market and have been growing them in my kitchen garden ever since. They have such a nice flavor, and the yellow skins (which never need peeling) are so pretty.