Seasonal Sundays (Week 30) Summer Salads

A big collection of summer salads, the mainstays of quick summer meals ...

~ Skip Straight to the Good Stuff ~

Welcome to Seasonal Sundays ...

Raise your hand if you love vegetable salads! Raise two hands if you really really really love vegetables salads in the summer! Enough Simon Says and yoga stretches but believe it or not, this was a difficult collection to gather together for one reason: I have soooo many great salad recipes, it's hard to pare them down to just a few!

So today I've focused on veggie-packed pasta salads, green bean salads, cucumber salads and vegetable salads with beans. Tomato salads? Zucchini salads? Corn salads? Saved for another day.

I hope you love this collection! Here's to the salad days of summer!

About the Photo By Popular Request, a Little Insight into the Top Image:

A moment of welcome calm, an eastern tiger swallowtail, a male I think, a common butterfly with broad habitat across America from the Atlantic to the Great Plains. This handsome fella is feeding on purple blazing star (also called liatris) in a meadow in the northern edges of the Missouri Ozarks. Close-ups of these lovely creatures often reveal less than perfect specimens: their wings are often in tatters and yet they're still flying.

A lesson?

If you, like me, are feeling beat up by the vulnerable state of the world — no, that's not right, it's the precarious state of these un-United States that sends me hangdog. What is it that makes so many of us so mean and selfish and outright bullies? What makes us accept and even applaud Portland, Atlanta, character assassination, stifled science and so so much more.

Every day feels like a firehose of insidious new and expanding threat. My long-time Canadian friend wrote this week, "You can't even escape to Canada anymore" because, you know, the border is closed (and should be).

And yet ... battered butterflies continue to fly and let us never forget that Black people have fought oppression and discrimination for centuries. As just-passed civil rights leader John Lewis wrote, "Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Do not become bitter or hostile. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. We will find a way to make a way out of no way."

Life, it's a long game, God willing.

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PICK ONE

Pick One is for those of us overwhelmed by life's unending choices. If that resonates, then check out this one recipe and then call it a day. It's one that I think could make the most difference, the one I hope will become a regular in your kitchen, as it is in mine.

• THE RECIPE Pinto Bean Salad
• ANOTHER TAKE Substitute black beans for pinto beans and fresh pineapple for tomato. Ooo-la-la!
• And ANOTHER Black Bean & Corn Salad

Masks for Canadians & More

Susan from Thunder Bay wrote: "This may interest your other Canadian readers. I recently bought a few comfortable masks from Canadian Tire. They are nothing fancy, just basic black in the L-XL size (which fit me very well but was a little short for my husband) or navy for the S-M size. But they are lightweight, breathable and non-binding around the ears. I find them more comfortable than the stiff ones I sewed. And less than $4 each!"

Sorry, these don't seem to be sold online.

My friend Kirsten from Farm Fresh Feasts (our moms were life-long friends! her mom introduced my parents!) recommends the traditional mask from Mystery Ranch, a backpack maker which pivoted earlier this year.

Both my husband and I found the gaiter masks from Sam's Club very useful this week, especially in a mask-on / mask-off situation since the mask rests around the neck and is easy to pull up and re-situate. They're still not online so if you order groceries from the Sam's or Instacart apps, you might have to ask the shopper for a special look, I've had to do this with other products and it works great.

Do you have a mask you love that others can purchase or make? Send me a note! Let's mask up, people!

Cook. Eat. Repeat.

Here's my appeal for mealtime minimalism, the idea that you don't have to think up a new breakfast or a new lunch every day. It's a way to think less about food rather than more. It's maintains that the ritual of healthy satisfying staples can fill you up in a way that the new and the novel cannot.

• THE RECIPE Old Liz's Old-Fashioned Cucumber & Tomato Salad
• ANOTHER TAKE Julia Child's Cucumber Salad

Summer Easy: Less Cookin', More Livin'.

More than a decade ago, I started collecting a certain style of summer dishes that espouse my summer motto, Less Cookin', More Livin'. These are Kitchen Parade's most simple, most fresh, most memorable and most summery recipes, all in one place. I hope you love 'em all! See Easy Summer Recipes!

• THE RECIPE Wedge Salad with Homemade Low-Cal & Low-Carb Blue Cheese Salad Dressing A summer indulgence.
• ANOTHER TAKE Loaded Iceberg Steaks with Homemade Thousand Island Dressing

Something New to You? A Challenge!

It's one thing to know what we like. It's another to get caught in a rut of repetition. Every so often, I may offer a challenge to try something that just might be new. The challenge is yours to accept – or y'know, not – but I hope to pique your palate!

• THE RECIPE My Everyday Creamy Herb Salad Dressing Never the same twice.
• ANOTHER TAKE Homemade Blueberry Vinaigrette

Not To Be Missed

• THE RECIPE Finnish Summer Potato Salad Just new potatoes and a simple vinaigrette.
• ANOTHER TAKE Mom’s Potato Salad

• THE RECIPE Big Cajun Chopped Salad
• ANOTHER TAKE Babe's Naked Fruit & Veggie Salad

• THE RECIPE Zucchini Spiral "Noodle" Salad A sexy, seductive zucchini-noodle salad.
• ANOTHER TAKE Spiral Zucchini Noodle “Zoodle” Greek Salad

Pasta Salads Loaded With Vegetables

• THE RECIPE Garden Pasta Salad with Mint Vinaigrette Light on pasta, generous with summer's best fresh veggies.
• ANOTHER TAKE Greek Pasta Salad Loaded with veggies, dressed with a creamy feta vinaigrette.

• THE RECIPE Best-Ever Macaroni Salad The summer classic, just better.
• ANOTHER TAKE BLT Pasta Salad A fresh approach for a summer favorite.

• THE RECIPE BLT Pasta Salad A fresh approach for a summer favorite.
• ANOTHER TAKE Best-Ever Macaroni Salad The summer classic, just better.

Summer Salads With Beans

• THE RECIPE Summer Black-Eyed Pea Salad
• ANOTHER TAKE Big Cajun Chopped Salad

• THE RECIPE Fresh Three-Bean Salad
• ANOTHER TAKE Succotash Salad with Green Beans, Lima Beans, Corn & Tomatoes

• THE RECIPE Quinoa & Black Bean Salad Transport straight back to Deep Mexico!
• ANOTHER TAKE Ina Garten's Tabbouleh Salad It has a secret ingredient!

Celebrating Summer Green Beans

• THE RECIPE Summer Green Bean Salad with Corn & Pickled Onion
• ANOTHER TAKE Fresh Green Bean Salad with Asian Dressing

• THE RECIPE Chilled Green Bean Salad with Rosemary & Garlic Oil
• ANOTHER TAKE Fresh Three-Bean Salad

• THE RECIPE Green Bean Garden Salad A "real" garden salad.
• ANOTHER TAKE Fresh Green Bean Salad with Asian Dressing

When the Garden Spits Out Cucumbers Like Bullets

• THE RECIPE Julia Child's Cucumber Salad
• ANOTHER TAKE Old Liz's Old-Fashioned Cucumber & Tomato Salad

• THE RECIPE Smitten Kitchen's Avocado-Cucumber Salad
• ANOTHER TAKE Spring & Summer Sliced Salad

• THE RECIPE Bloody Mary Salad A jello salad with kick.
• ANOTHER TAKE Tomato Soup Vegetable Salad An old-fashioned salad makeover.

What's New?!

• THE RECIPE How to Sweeten Lemonade with Fruit Not Sugar Summer experiments with pineapple, watermelon and more.
• ANOTHER TAKE Old-Fashioned Homemade Lemonade How to make real lemonade with a simple technique that extracts extra flavor from the lemon peels.

• THE RECIPE Cooler Corn - How to Cook Corn in a Beer Cooler
• ANOTHER TAKE Quick Microwave Sweet Corn

Text Me Back!

I'd love to hear from you. Comment, send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com, dot-dash in Morse code, build a fire for smoke signals, launch a message in a bottle, send a Christmas letter, get the dog to yip, toss me a note wrapped in a rubberband, write a message in the sky, scratch a note in the sand, listen to a seashell, whatever.

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Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences. Quick Suppers are Kitchen Parade favorites and feature recipes easy on the budget, the clock, the waistline and the dishwasher. Do you have a favorite recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. Never miss a recipe! If you like this recipe, sign up for a free e-mail subscription. If you like Kitchen Parade, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. If you make this recipe, I'd love to know your results! Just leave a comment below.

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