Dinner Bowl #75

 

For hot weather, a cold lunch: Carrot quinoa salad (based on a recipe from Feasting at Home), sweet and sour potato salad (recipe from Today's Parent), and creamy cucumber salad (recipe from Fannie Farmer Cookbook).

I didn't quite have the right ingredients, necessarily, for this carrot salad. I was almost out of celery, so I only put a little bit in. I also could only find broccoli sprouts for the microgreens. And I used slivered almonds rather than chopped. But it didn't matter: It was delicious! It's truly a great make ahead salad. You just have to reserve the broccoli sprouts to add just before serving.

I bought purple potatoes because Wegmans still didn't have Yukon golds, and I didn't just want red potatoes again. I bought red potatoes, of course, but I also grabbed some purple, so I'd be less disappointed. This salad combined both in a highly unusual version of a potato salad, but one that really lets the potatoes stay vibrant. It also tastes really good, and stayed tasty for days.

It's been far too long since I made this cucumber salad, the first thing I ever managed to make with cucumbers that made me want to eat a whole bowl of them. This time, I didn't have dill, and used parsley (which is one of the options in the recipe), which made it a less distinctive flavor but still perfectly delicious.

I've never been that into green leafy salads, but there fortunately are a lot of others. July can't be as aggressive a pantry utilization quest--that's only natural--and that's partly because in weather like this I want freshness and salad. But I'm still being careful about what I buy, and trying to use all the things I buy fully. I go to stores less frequently than I did in past summers. It's working out. And I still get delicious food!