30 Sensational Summer Salads

Summer is in full swing, kids are on vacation, days are long, time is short and meals are aplenty!

Check out this round-up of 30 Sensational Summer Salads for all occasions to get your tastebuds and inspiration flowing!

Whether you need a salad for lunch or dinner, a side salad, or some great ideas for salads to serve at a summer BBQ or picnic there is one here for every occasion and every palate!

Here are some inspirational recipes so let’s get cooking!!

Entree Salad Dishes (Meat Free)

 

Quinoa Tabbouleh

Kale Salad with Pear, Berries & Walnuts by Simply Fresh Dinners

Almond, Mango, Kale, Pasta, Green Bean Chopped Salad by Kitchen Chopper

 

Entree Salad Dishes with Meat/Poultry

 

Cobb Salad

Taco Salad

Warm Spinach Salad

Chicken Salad with Strawberry Balsamic Dressing

Tuna Nicoise Salad

Crab, Tangerine & Fresh Herb Salad by Simply Fresh Dinners

Southwestern Cornbread Salad by Recipes For Our Daily Bread

 

Side Salads

 

Traditional Coleslaw

Red Cabbage & Broccoli Slaw

Three Bean Salad

Simple Green Salad

Berry Salad by Coffee With Us 3

Roasted Corn Salad with Feta & Tomatoes by Coffee With Us 3

Cranberry Green Salad by Coffee With Us 3

Fresh Tomato & Feta Salad by Eat It & Say Yum

 

Potato & Pasta Salads

 

Cheesy Ranch Potato Salad by From That’s My Home

Buffalo Chicken Pasta Salad by A Kitchen Hoor

Pasta Salad with Zing! by My Freshly Brewed Life

Healthy Potato Salad by Simply Fresh Dinners

Grandma’s Potato Salad by Coffee With Us 3

Summer Pasta Salad

 

Dessert Salads

 

Simple Fruit Salad by Coffee With Us 3

Pistachio Salad by Thrifty Treasures

Strawberry Pretzel Salad by Thrift Treasures

 

Salad Dressings

 

Greek Style Vinaigrette

Italian Balsamic Dressing

Ranch Dressing Mix

Greek Salad with Tuna

 

I had a craving for Greek Salad recently.

We decided to make it for dinner but we wanted to bulk it up a little by adding some extra protein – hence the tuna!

Greek Salad with Tuna was born and it was very quick, simple and delicious!

This Greek Salad with Tuna provides the perfect family summer dinner (or lunch) for your family or friends as it is very easy to make especially great for those summer evenings on the go, or after a long day when you need something quick and nutritious to eat.

We paired this with our Greek Style Vinaigrette which made for the perfect combination!

This is the simplest recipe I have made in a very long time! It’s so simple it doesn’t really require instructions-but I have them for you anyway! Ready? Blink and you will miss them!

Wash and chop romaine lettuce (or a different favorite lettuce) and place in a bowl

 

Add 2 cans of drained tuna fish to the bowl

 

Add cherry tomatoes, black and green olives, sliced bell pepper and diced cucumbers

 

Add crumbed feta cheese and thinly sliced red onion

 

And serve! That’s it!

Ingredients:

Serves 3-4

2 heads of romaine lettuce, chopped

1 cucumber, diced

1/3 C green olives

1/3 C black olives

1/2 red onion, finely slivered

1 orange/red bell pepper, sliced

2 cans tuna, drained

4oz feta cheese, crumbed

1/2 C cherry tomatoes

Red Cabbage & Broccoli Slaw

As you all know by now I am not a fan of boring salads!

We recently signed up to bring salad to a pot luck lunch so I decided to liven things up a little with coleslaw! No regular coleslaw for me – I made Red Cabbage & Broccoli Slaw.

I love this kind of slaw-one because it’s different and 2-because it looks fabulous! It’s bright, bold and different! I like to mix things up a little and think outside of the box.

I love coleslaw, and I always like experimenting! This is not Captain America’s realm at all-he looked at me blankly when we were grocery shopping and I asked him what other ingredients I could use! Usually he is a fountain of creativity-but coleslaw had him stumped!

I picked red cabbage and broccoli slaw because I love the crunch and color of the two together – add in the orange of the fresh carrots and we are ready to go!

Feel free to experiment with other ingredients-next time I think I will add some dried cranberries! Delicious!

Ingredients:

1/2 red onion, diced

1/2 red cabbage, diced

1 large head of broccoli, cut into small florets

5 carrots, peeled and finely diced

For the dressing:

1/3 C fruit juice (any 100% juice will work)

1 tbsp garlic salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp ground mustard

2 tbsp chives

1/2 tsp paprika

1 tsp lemon juice

1/2 tsp coriander

pinch of cayenne pepper

For serving:

sunflower seeds (optional)

Directions:

In a large measuring cup, add all the dressing ingredients and whisk together until there are no lumps. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, add the onion, carrots, broccoli and red cabbage and stir together.

Pour the dressing over the salad and stir until thoroughly mixed. Refrigerate until you are ready to serve.

Right before serving, sprinkle over a few sunflower seeds for added crunch!

This is best made the day before you want to serve it

Cinco De Mayo Recipe Round-Up

Cinco De Mayo is just around the corner

What better way to celebrate than with a selection of our finest Mexican influenced recipes from Captain America & His English Rose in our Cinco De Mayo Recipe Round-Up!

We love Mexican food, and we love to create recipe influenced by some of our favorite foods!

These recipes were all created out of a genuine love for Mexican food – so let’s celebrate Cinco De Mayo in style!

 

Keep In Touch Via Email – never miss a post:

Greek Style Vinaigrette

Captain America recently made this INCREDIBLE Greek Style Vinaigrette!

It is very simple-so don’t be put off by the list of ingredients, and tastes delicious!

For those of you experiencing sunny, warm days like we are in California can put this to use immediately on a crisp salad…..the rest of you may want to make salad, whatever the weather is like, JUST so you can eat this dressing now!

We used it on the green salad we served at our Passover Meal and it went down a storm-resulting in many people wanting the recipe!

So here it is….as promised-Captain America’s Greek Style Vinaigrette!

For more salad dressing recipes, check out Our Italian Balsamic Dressing and our ‘no added ingredients’ Ranch Dressing Mix

Quinoa Tabbouleh

Seeing as the weather is warming up in California we are heading into salad season.

Those of you who follow the blog will know that Captain America LOVES salad and could eat it everyday, I on the other hand, am not a huge fan of salad! Growing up in England we didn’t really eat salad in the colder months, we stick to hearty, warming dishes. Salad was reserved for warmer days-of which we got very few-hence my dislike with salad!

However, Tabbouleh is one of my favorite salads! I fell in love with it while I was in Israel many years ago-there is nothing quite like proper Arabic Tabbouleh!

Unfortunately, I never got the recipe, as I was too young to care at the time, so I have to rely on others I find on the Internet!

We made this as a starter dish for our recent Christ In The Passover Meal at church and it went down a storm. We made it with quinoa-so it was Kosher! Unlike the traditional Tabbouleh which is made with Bulgar Wheat.

You could make this recipe with bulgar wheat, couscous or quinoa-all of them would be fabulous I’m sure. The joy of making this recipe, with quinoa, is that you will get your fill of protein and it is perfect for those of you who are gluten-intolerant too!

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Thanksgiving Round-Up: Side Dishes

I LOVE Thanksgiving!  I know….there is a huge irony in that, being British and loving Thanksgiving! 

I love it for the time with family and friends, it’s a chance to get together with those you love from near and far and celebrate and be thankful.  We all have so much to be thankful for, whether it has been a wonderful year or a difficult one – if we think for just a moment we can think of a hundred little things to be thankful for.

I love that each family has their traditions.  I have been blessed to experience many different family traditions, especially as my first 5 years here where before I had a family of my own here, so I was always ‘adopted’ by a wonderful family, or friends and made to feel like I was a part of something.  From Pumpkin Pie eaten first thing in the morning, to watching the latest movie release, to everyone round the table sharing what they are thankful for, to playing board games, to going to bed early to get up even earlier to go Black Friday shopping, to not sleeping at all and shopping ’til you drop, to avoiding shopping altogether, to gift giving ‘just because’, to family baking sessions, to putting up Christmas decorations…..it was all wonderful, and special and unique to that family.

30-Minute Meals: Warm Spinach Salad

This is one of the easiest meals you will ever make!

It’s just ingredients assembled in a bowl

I found inspiration for this recipe from The Pioneer Woman, although there are many similar recipes out there, and I adapted the recipe quite substantially

So are you ready?  

Here we go…………

30-Minute Recipes: Taco Salad & Giveaway

We love to eat Mexican food…..well our version of it anyway! I would never try and claim that the food we make here is ‘genuine’ but we love it all the same!

We also love to use ground turkey instead of beef as it’s a slightly healthier option! Burritos is our usual ‘quick’ dinner option, but I fancied a change and made Taco Salad instead! It was delicious, and was really quick and easy!

Again, like most of my recipes you can add other ingredients that take your fancy!  Food should be fun…..so get experimental! What can go wrong?!?! (I won’t mention my attempt at a mango & pineapple cake last week that was a total disaster!! That’s for another day!)

I hope you enjoy this Taco Salad as much as we did!

What’s your favorite Mexican style food??

Recipe and directions after the break………..

 

Have you entered our GIVEAWAY yet?? 

Follow the LINK to enter the giveaway!

30-Minute Recipes – Coleslaw

On our recent trip to England, this was one of the many recipes I BEGGED my Mum to make!

I love her Coleslaw!

It is probably the best I have ever eaten!  I’m not sure what makes it so good as there are no secret ingredients or hidden techniques – but it is just delicious!

This is one of the simplest recipes I have ever posted……the only slight time consuming thing is chopping the vegetables, but if you have a food processor you will be laughing!

There is a basic recipe which you can then add to with whatever ingredients take your fancy.

Captain America hates raisins – so he got a special bowl without them.  Mum, Dad and I all love raisins so they are a must for our Coleslaw.  This time Mum added pineapple for a little sweet twist.  We also prefer a fruity Coleslaw but for many people I know this isn’t a preference.  We also add nuts and seeds to ours for crunch!