The weather here in Southern Arizona is warming up!  This is why we live here!  Sunshine and heat!  When it warms up, we love to eat lots of salad at our house!  Some people tell me, salad is so much work; but it really isn’t!  Just get in the kitchen and start chopping!  If you aren’t going to use the whole bowl, just keep the dressing on the side and it will last all week!  Also remember, don’t use a knife to cut your lettuce, just tear it apart with your fingers.  This will prevent browning around the edges!

Here is my favorite ITALIAN SALAD: great with some grilled meat or just add some grilled chicken to the salad and call it a meal!

ITALIAN SALAD:

For the dressing:

1 cup loosely packed fresh flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped, about 1 bunch

10 large leaves of fresh basil

1/4 tsp. fresh oregano

2 cloves of garlic

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

3/4 cup good quality olive oil

3/4 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. pepper

1 1/2 tsp. honey

Place all in a food processor or blender and pulse until blended.

For the salad:

1 large or 2 small heads of romaine lettuce, washed, patted dry and cut into large bite size pieces

1 large red bell pepper chopped

1 cup hothouse cucumbers chopped

1 large carrot peeled into ribbons

Handful of grape tomatoes

Handful of Kalamata olives

Red onion rings to taste

Feta cheese to taste

Mix all ingredients together and toss with dressing.  Enjoy!

Cheers!

Chef Kathy

This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2012 at 7:21 am and is filed under Main Dish, Poultry, Salad Dressings & Condiments, Salads, Vegetable. Tags for this post: healthy, italian salad, lettuce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.