The weather was a summer-like almost 90 degrees this weekend, so I didn't feel much like eating hot food. But I did want something more substantial than the chopped salads I was eating for most of the summer.
You can find recipes in unlikely places sometimes. A recipe for bean salad on the back of the Kids Post section of the Sunday newspaper caught my eye this summer, and I clipped the recipe "just in case." Unfortunately, we stopped at the grocery store yesterday morning on the way home from a weekend trip, so I couldn't consult the recipe before shopping. But I remembered enough of it, and made up the rest out of what I had and a few things I picked up at the store. If you keep canned beans in your pantry (or home-cooked beans in your freezer), you'll always have the base for a quick salad that is good for a meal or a side dish.
Just drain and rinse 2 or 3 cans of beans, chop some veggies, dress the salad, and pop it in the fridge to let the flavors mingle.
Here's what I used:
1 can black-eyed peas
1 can chickpeas
1 can cannellini beans
2 carrots, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
1 cucumber, chopped
juice of 1 lime
1 teaspoon herbs de Provence
lots of freshly ground black pepper
I juiced the lime first, and let the herbs de Provence hydrate a bit in the juice while I made the salad. Then I dressed the salad with the herbed lime juice. I ate a bowl of this for lunch, with grapes for dessert, and then used it in as an ingredient in a chopped salad for dinner, too.
I think a nice vinaigrette dressing would be perfect for this, if you are not avoiding oil. I could also see going in different directions with this -- Southwestern with black beans and corn as a base, with a spicy dressing, for example.
The weather is going to be cool and rainy today, so I think our Indian summer is at an end, but I am going to have lots of fun playing with this template when the weather warms up again. I hope you have fun with it, too.
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