Not Just Rabbit Food

It finally feels like summer is here, and I couldn't be happier about it. It's hot outside, the sun stays up until after 9 pm, and everyone is finally settling into the weather instead of worrying that it's going to drop to 30 degrees in a couple day (that's how spring works in Michigan). There are only two downsides to summer: 1) It's too hot to cook inside (we're trying to not use our air conditioning this summer if we can help it), and 2) we're not allowed to have a grill in our apartment complex. This means that I have to come up with a lot of non-cook meals for dinners. Which means a lot of salads.

Friday evening I finally got home after 8 days away, and while I wanted to go out to dinner, Aaron said he missed my home cooking and wanted me to make something. Which, yes, was very sweet, but it was about 90 degrees outside and I didn't want to cook. So, I ended up making a Cobb Salad for dinner, he loved it, and I only had to turn on the stove for a couple of minutes. Here's the recipe I got from my mom:

Cobb Salad

Bacon, cooked and crumbled
Lettuce (romaine) chopped into bite-sized pieces
Deli Turkey, julienned (ask the deli to give you a 1/4 inch slice of turkey, and cut it into strips)
Avocado
Tomato
Blue Cheese crumbles (we used feta because Aaron doesn't like blue cheese)
Hard Boiled Egg, cubed
Dressing (recipe below)

Create a bed of the lettuce on a large plate or platter. Place each ingredient in a stripe across the lettuce. Drizzle with the dressing, and enjoy!

Dressing:
1/2 c. red wine vinegar
1 tsp. worchestershire sauce
1/2 tsp. dijon mustard
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/3 c. olive oil

Mix well.

And there you go! Couldn't be easier. Vegetarians could leave off the meat. I'm thinking about doing an Italian version this week, with salami, provolone, pepperocini, roasted red peppers, tomatoes, and marinated artichoke hearts. It's so good.

One other salad that I love, but that is a side dish rather than a main dish salad, is what my family calls "Pickles". Just slice up a large cucumber, chop up a little bit of onion or shallot, add a tablespoon sugar, salt, pepper, and a couple of tablespoons each of cider vinegar and olive oil.

Rotisserie chickens are great this time of year, because you get a lot of cooked chicken without having to deal with the heat of cooking one. A good salad using rotisserie chicken is the Asian Rotisserie Chicken Salad from Martha Stewart's Everyday Food.

Now I'm hungry, even though I just ate breakfast. I need to find more of these mostly no-cook recipes, because it looks like it's going to be a hot summer, and the very last thing I want to do is stand over the stove. But, like I said, I'm still over-the-moon happy that summer is finally here.