Since The Seven Salads of Summer were such a hit, I’m doing an extra eighth one! This one was really fun to make due to all the colors! The original recipe called for apples, clementines, yellow squash, beets, blueberries, and salad greens. Of course, I had to add to that, creating a real rainbow of a salad! For red, in addition to the beets, I added little tomatoes. For orange, I stuck with the clementines but you could easily add sweet orange peppers. Same with yellow, though I stuck with the yellow squash. In addition to the salad greens, I threw in some crisp, fresh cucumbers (thanks to the FBBQ in-laws!) and scallions. For salad greens, I went with arugula, kale, and baby spinach. Blue, obviously blueberries. And purple, I threw in some radicchio. There are so many other fun, colorful fruits and veggies you could add to this! Go nuts! Literally, some almonds or pine nuts would be great on this too!
Pretty simple procedure for this one. Mix up all those tasty colors in a bowl. Cook up some brown or wild rice. Staying consistent with the color theme, I used a mixture of brown and wild rice, along with some purple rice! As the rice cooled, I mixed up the dressing.
I love homemade dressings. I like knowing what’s going in my food (no preservatives or added sugar). Making things from scratch is a great way to monitor this. It’s also a good way tailor the taste specifically to what you like! This dressing called for orange juice, white wine vinegar, poppy seeds, stone ground mustard, maple syrup, onion powder, salt and pepper. Who needs added sugar with OJ and maple syrup! Normally, I like some pulp in my orange juice but I couldn’t find one without a lot of extra junk added to it so I went with the organic pulp-free. I mixed the juice and the vinegar with the maple syrup and mustard and added a dash of onion powder, salt, and pepper. Lastly, I threw in those cute little poppy seeds, which really made this dressing fun and added some extra pop to the salad.
I served this up with a slice of Toasted Honey Sunflower bread (one of my favorites). The nice thing about all these salads is that the leftovers make for easy dinners throughout the week.
Enjoy!
