Shepherd's Salad

Here is a second recipe from this great vegetarian cookbook. This reminded me very much of a greek/chopped salad. I have really gotten into loving homemade salad dressings. They really are so simple, and good. Fresh ingredients and having everything on hand makes such a difference. My newest resolution is to not buy store dressing anymore!

Here is the dressing for this salad.

4-5 coriander seeds, crushed, or 1/2 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp salt

1 tsp dried mint (hmm....I will probably try this with fresh in the spring/summer when I

can pick it from my garden!)

1/2 tsp dried dill weed (same with this one)

3 TBSP olive oil

juice of 1 lemon

Mix it all together in a small bowl or shaker. Pour over salad, toss gently and serve.

The basic veggies for this salad are exact:

1 green pepper, thinly sliced

1 onion, thinly sliced

3 tomatoes, cut into thin wedges

4 radishes, thinly sliced

1/2 cucumber, thinly sliced

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

2 TBSP finely chopped parsley

As recommended I did add greek olives and crumbled feta cheese. I also added a couple of pepperochini's sliced. There are some other alterations recommended in the book.

In my photo you may notice my mandolin. I do love it for slicing things that need to be uniform and thin. I actually like chopping and slicing most of the time, but my mandolin gets used a lot. I did spend a fair amount of time at Bed, Bath and Beyond looking at all the different options they had and decided on that one. It's easy to clean and does a great job. I probably should be better at using the safety guard provided.

Planning, planning, planning is what seems to help me the very most in the kitchen. My next big hurdle is to make meals for 2 people and not 4-6. Not that Krista minds taking leftovers home, but I just really ought to start making less.