From My Kitchen...

I love making meal type salads on warm, summer evenings when we just don't feel like eating hot meals. Tonite, this is gracing my table:

Cici's Tomato Cucumber Salad

6 medium sized ripe tomatoes, diced small

1/2 English cuke, shredded with a large hole grater

1 small red onion, finely diced

Stir together and chill. When ready to serve, add dressing, or 

serve dressing on the side. You can also add finely shredded red cabbage

to this recipe for extra veggie power if you like.

Dressing:

1 cup yogurt (I make my own soy yogurt so I can 'thin' down mayo dressings and use it for sour cream, baking, etc)

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1 t salt

1/2 t lemon pepper

1 t Greek seasoning (I get mine from Penzy's spices)

1 T sugar or sweetener of choice

Whisk til smooth. Serve with cucumber salad dressing or any salad you wish, really.

With this meal, I served baked rice (done in the crockpot so I didn't heat up the house!):

3 cups brown rice

6 cups hot water

1 T olive oil

1 T salt

1 t black pepper

Bake on high in crockpot 3  hours or until soft. If baking in the oven, bake at 350* for 1 1/2 hours.

I also served baked chicken. Some of us had chicken shredded into our salad, and some had chicken on rice with a little cheese sprinkled on top, and one of us had rice, chicken and taco salad dressing (his all time favorite way to eat rice).

I hope you enjoy these simple recipes.

You can also take the salad recipe above, add cooked pasta of choice and some chicken and make it a real meal salad. I probably would also add black or kalamata olives, some green olives, and maybe even some artichokes if I was feeling extra 'greekish'.