Summertime is salad time, at least in my house. Where I live it gets hot and very humid, so even though I'm Northern born and raised I tend to skew toward the Southern method of handling food and I cook a bunch of stuff late at night when the temperature is more manageable that can be eaten cold later.
Or, you know, sometimes I don't cook at all. Like I did with this Shrimp Salad. I actually came up with this one because I bought a bunch of stuff from Omaha Steaks and my freezer was so full something had to go. I figured I'd defrost a bag of shrimp, and while it was in the sink I pulled together a bunch of stuff I thought would be good in it. This got a high approval rating from everyone who tried it, to the point where I hid the last serving in a sour cream container so I could have it all to myself.
You know the absolute best part about summer? Fresh local produce. And because a lot of the local farms start their plants in greenhouses well before the snow melts, even in mid-June I can get just about everything I could ever hope to want at the farmer's market. Not that everything in this one came from there; some things simply aren't in season regardless, so I had to supplement from the grocery store. But I'd say this is about 80% farmer's market goods, and another 10% could have been if I'd gone that way.
I read somewhere once that if you're trying to eat healthy, you should always go with vegetables in a variety of colours. Not only is it pleasing to the eye, but it ensures you're getting the most diverse amount of vitamins and minerals. I think I succeeded quite well with this one!
I confess: If given the opportunity, I would eat avocado in some form every single meal, every single day, until there were no more avocados left. I love to snack on them, make dips out of them, use them as sandwich toppings, eat them in salads... Avocado is even more of a weakness for me than bacon, and if you know me you know that's saying a lot.
So I had this avocado on my counter that last night I noticed was a lot softer than I'd prefer, since apparently I missed the 12-minute window in which it was perfectly ripe. It happens more often than not. But it wasn't yet turning brown when I cut it open, so a new recipe was born.
You know how sometimes you put something together purely to see if it'll work? I do that a lot. In fact, there are an incredible number of things I've thought were going to become a new recipe that instead were relegated to the trash heap, never to be made again.
This, however... This one was a keeper! Even though I thought I had feta and it turned out to be blue cheese (and smoke flavoured blue cheese at that), I went ahead with my plan. And it was amazing!
