beautiful salads

Inspiration struck! I made gorgeous salads!

This first one is loosely based on an Asian-style slaw recipe I found on a blog:

Green leaf lettuce, shredded, and very finely shredded cabbage, topped with slicecd cucumber, carrot, red bell pepper, sugar-snap peas, green onions, peanuts, and fried tofu cubes. I made an Asian-style vinaigrette, (switching up my favorite basic recipe from Crystal,) which I also used to marinade the tofu in. The whole salad was so crisp and refreshing and delicious! A perfect, gorgeous summer dinner.

My coteacher sent me a link with something like 15 different salad recipes the other day, and I swear to you, I wanted to make every single salad on the list. Here was the first one I loosely copied:

Now, I really didn't follow the recipe at all, except that I did use 6 ears of fresh sweet corn and 4 ripe heirloom tomatoes. It was WAY too hot and humid to cook the corn last night, so I just left it raw, chopped the tomatoes, added some olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, chopped basil and parsley, and a half-log of goat cheese, crumbled, at the very end. Another crisp and refreshing hit! This salad probably won't keep well, though, so find someone cool to give the leftovers to (we unloaded the last 2 cups on Dan's brother, who has been saving my butt lately with Oliver. Let's just say our home life has been disrupted for the last month and a bit due to pest control issues, and Oliver has had lots of sleep-overs at Ryan's. Plus, Ryan always comes over to feed him when we go out of town! Shout out to Ryan!)