Mediterranean Chopped Salad Concept Recipe

Fresh vegetables chopped together, tossed with a vinaigrette, and garnished with feta cheese.

This is not a post for a tentative cook, though honestly I have no idea how many of my readers aren't assertive in the kitchen. I mean, someone adventurous* enough to sign up for a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share has got to have some confidence in the kitchen, right?

I made this salad to serve alongside a Lebanese-spiced ground beef and lentil dish. We ate this as shown, with hummus, yogurt, and warm naan bread. The fresh crunchy salad was the hit of the meal. Over the summer I threw together versions of this quick salad to serve alongside grilled chicken, alongside a dinner of hummus & chips, and as a snack. [Apparently I never bothered to label any other photos of it in the thousands of photos taken last year.]

Why should I include such a simple recipe idea on this blog? Easy. The whole point of the blog is to give you ideas for what to do with produce from your farm share, your garden, the farmer's market or store. The more ideas, the more successfully you'll use your produce. If the photos do a decent job of conveying how fresh and crunchy this side dish is, then my work here is done.

This recipe will appear in the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient as well as the Cucumber Recipes Collection and the Pepper Recipes Collection. If I remember to snap a photo of it with other combinations of veggies, I'll update and add it to additional collections. You can also find this, and other ideas for using Colorful Veggies [that grow] Above Ground on my Pinterest board of the same name.

Breakfast Salad

Roasted potatoes, sautéed cabbage and shallots, and puffy scrambled eggs combined for a tasty morning--or evening--meal in one. A tasty way to start off your day--with vegetables.

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I'll be among the first to admit that my family is weird about breakfasts.  The kids don't like cereal (except for when they love cereal, geez, Mom, why didn't you buy more?), my spouse would happily eat oatmeal every single day, and I'm not hungry for hours after I wake up.  I'm very glad my kids are happy to eat leftovers and my spouse is self sufficient.  We do like muffins, eggs, and waffles a lot around here, though, and like to have big family breakfasts on the weekends. You'll find many breakfast or muffin options in my recipe index by category to your right --->

This is not a fast meal, and would be terrific for a weekend breakfast, or lunch or even Breakfast for Dinner if you like. For us it's another way to eat more veggies, and an unusual name that just stuck with me.  I mean, the idea of cabbage and potatoes together is a classic one.  And in our house, cabbage and potatoes for breakfast is not too unusual when we're getting cabbage in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share.

But to throw it all in a bowl and call it a salad is different for me. I got the idea on a walk [I walked a half marathon last year and recently signed up to do it again--hopefully with my spouse this time] while mulling over what to do with a cabbage.  I'd been seeing salad recipe round ups, and it just hit me that fixing our cabbage-for-breakfast, with a few modifications, would equal a Breakfast Salad.

Sautéed Beet Greens and Spring Onions with Sherry Vinegar

(Subtitle:  A soul-satisfying meal)

If you just want to know how to make a fast, simple, healthy and colorful side dish using fresh beet greens and spring onions, or how to take that side dish and make it a complete meal by topping it with an egg, skip over this next bit.  As physically satisfying as this combination of foods is though, when I paused and thought about it, this meal was satisfying on a soul-ullar level as well.

I've shaken the hands that planted the beet seeds in open flats back in February, the hands that transplanted the young seedlings to cell packs, the hands that moved the tender beet plants into the fertile soil of the hoop house in April, and the hands that harvested those beets last week.  [I deliberately left out weeding, because Farmer Josh tells me that they plant the beets densely so they shade out any potentially-germinating weeds.]  I've shaken the hands that gathered the eggs, like generations have before them, on Keener Farm.  I've even scratched the ears of the dogs and cats that live on the farms where these foods grew. 

All of those experiences align in this bite of my lunch, and that makes for a much deeper connection to my food.  I like that.  If you have the opportunity (and this is the second state I've lived in where I've found this opportunity), try it some time.  See that Local Harvest gadget in the upper left corner?  Find a farmer near you by searching your zip code.

Have your meal satisfy you on multiple levels.