Real life lunch. Nothing too fancy but still mighty tasty.
Simple, good ingredients from the farmer’s market almost don’t need any help from the cook. Buy what is fresh and in season and it’s pretty hard to go wrong making salads, sides, or even a quick lunch.
Plenty of restaurants would charge you big bucks for a “salad sampler”. Why not make them at home.
These are so simple, I’m not even doing full recipes and ingredient photos. Use what you like, what you have on hand, or what is fresh at the market. It’s a mix and match lunch.
For Tomato Feta Salad, I have 3 ripe tomatoes cut into chunks. Add a bit of red onion if you like a little spice and tang and crumble some good feta cheese on the top.
Season with salt and pepper and toss with about 2 Tablespoons each of olive oil and red or white wine vinegar.
If you have fresh basil, throw a big handful right on top!
Caprese Salad meets Greek Feta. Why not?
My all time favorite farmer’s market find has to be fingerling potatoes.
These little beauties are so small they should probably be called toe potatoes…but that’s just a little weird. They take only minutes in boiling water to cook up to fork tenderness.
Karl, my awesome friend and host has so much volunteer dill it’s growing out of the cracks in his driveway. Seriously, I picked more than I could use and I didn’t even get near the herb garden.
Make a quick vinaigrette with 2-3 Tablespoons of olive oil, 1-2 Tablespoons of vinegar, 1 big spoonful of good mustard (I’m using spicy mustard…so good with the potatoes), salt, pepper, and a bunch of chopped dill.
Toss in the warm, cooked potatoes and maybe a chopped shallot or some red onion.
Ta Da! Dill Fingerling Potato Salad.
Throw in a few greens or a scoop of leftover celery salad, add a nice roll from the store and you have a Summer Salad Sampler in minutes.
Any of these salads would be great picnic food too. Since they are not mayo-based dressings, you can serve them cold or at room temperature.
Real. Good. Fresh. Food. Hard to beat it.
7 Responses
If you have a cooler in your car, please raid Karl’s Herb Garden and bring me a big bouqet of fresh dill !!!!!!!!!!!!! Mille Grazie!
Liz, Let me see what I can do. If there is room in the cooler, I’ll try putting some in water or damp towels for transport. But I’m afraid that by the time i get home it will be very wilted. Bootlegging dill to Florida.
Claudia, maybe put it in a plastic bag! Because the dill they sell in Publix is also in Plastic bags and it must have had a long transport.
It’s about time you get home, you’ve been gone all summer so it seems! Your cats are miserable and your master and commander (Jim) is more miserable, especially since he misses your fine cooking and smiling face! Have a safe trip back!
Master and Commander???? Ha ha! That may be the funniest thing I’ve heard all year. Good grief….
Welcome back! And now I am hungry for a salad. 🙂
ROTFL: “Master and Commander” Bwahahahahahaha
Oh my goodness…..these look amazing.
I’ve always wondered what I would do with those little taters….now I know. Um, and yeah, we’ll not refer to them as toe potatoes. Grossers.
I am craving both salads right now!!
I forgot to mention this in the post, but my absolute favorite way of cooking fingerling potatoes is to boil them up and then add butter, fresh tarragon, salt and pepper. Yum.