our favorite summer recipes

At the end of April, I shared about our summer produce challenge where we decided to eat primarily vegetables for lunch.  We've done surprisingly well.  Obviously, when we were on our very long trip we didn't follow this plan...it's kinda hard to eat this way when you're either grabbing fast food on the road or eating at other people's houses.

Today I thought I'd share some of our favorite salads.  These are the foods that we haven't been able to get enough of this summer!

1)  Shauna Niequist's Watermelon Feta Salad


2)  Corn, Avocado, Tomato, Feta, Cucumber & Red Onion with a Cilantro Vinaigrette


3)  Spinach Strawberry Salad with Candied Pecans, Feta and Raspberry Poppyseed Dressing



If you can get your hands on Shauna Niequest's book Bread and Wine, I'd also recommend her play on mexican street corn (Elotes) - grilled corn, feta, lime, a touch of mayonnaise (i'm typing this from memory so i'm probably forgetting something).  It's really good!  Sometimes we use it as a main dish, but it's also good as a side to steak or grilled chicken.

One more "recipe" that comes from my sister.  We eat this almost every week.  Sometimes as a main dish.  Sometimes as a side.  Sometimes as a topping for mexican food.  Just mix corn, black beans, red onion, cilantro and lime juice.  Add a little salt and pepper and store in the fridge.  It lasts for a few days so we usually make a big amount and eat it several times.

Hope you find a new recipe and give it a try!

summer produce challenge

We're trying a fun little experiment in our house.  It started as the idea to eat vegan for lunches.  But it has slowly evolved when I realized that quite a few of my recipes for yummy vegetables included parmesan cheese and I really didn't want to skip that!  So then we were calling them vegetarian lunches.  But it doesn't really do it justice, because it's more than just not eating meat.

Last night I told my husband that it's "lunches where the vegetables shine" and I'm pretty sure he rolled his eyes and requested that we please just stick with calling them vegetarian.  :)  We'll be eating primarily vegetables and fruits for week day lunches for the summer.

We're starting tomorrow!

I've been busy pinning interesting vegetable recipes, choosing the ones we'll try this week, compiling the list of ingredients and shopping for them.  The picture above is our shopping cart after we left the produce section! (side note: I'm a little disgusted by how many plastic bags we used.  I need a new system)

Here are some of our reasons for doing this experiment:

• make healthier eating choices and hopefully lose weight
• eat more intentionally (perhaps focus on what is in season and buy more local produce?)
• find new recipes to avoid getting stuck in a cooking rut
• teach our bodies to be satisfied with a meal of vegetables 
• to say we did it!  we both thought it sounded like a fun experiment for the summer!

Here's the recipe I'm making for lunch tomorrow: Cucumber Avocado Caprese Salad