Summer Salads

The weather here has been gorgeous recently, maybe a tad on the hot side but I'm not going to complain! I love it when the suns out and you can feel the heat around you, although it does make sleeping more difficult. I'd love for the Summer to stay as lovely as it's been recently and with that weather comes the opportunity for BBQ's, picnics and any other form of outdoor eating. As we've been making the most of these opportunities recently, we've come up with a few salad recipe ideas, (and by we I mean my mum and I) which would make great dishes for any BBQ or picnic and to make them even better, they are not only delicious but also healthy!

Asian Slaw

1. Dice half an onion and place it into a bowl.
2. Chop half a red cabbage and add it to the onion.
3. Grate a carrot into the dish.
4. Add some white wine vinegar.
5. Add about a heaped teaspoon of granulated sweetener.
6. Chop half a chilli pepper and add it to the mix.
7. Mix everything together and serve.

Mango Salsa

1. Chop a mango into small chunks and place them in a bowl.
2. Cut a little bit of watermelon into similar sized chunks and add them to the mango (this is optional as it didn't add a great deal of flavour so wasn't an essential ingredient but still made a delicious dish).
3. Finely chop some coriander and add it to the bowl.
4. Chop a chilli pepper and add it to the dish. You may want to add more or less depending on how hot you like your salsa and the heat of the chillis you use. Alternatively, use chilli flakes if you don't have the peppers, they taste just as lovely.
5. Mix all of the ingredients together and season with some salt and pepper.

Fruity Rice

Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the rice on it's own once I had finished making it but you can see it in the bottom right hand corner of the picture above. This recipe was actually inspired by Severina who mentioned a rice salad with mandarin a while back and I thought now would be the perfect time to try something similar. I ended up really loving this dish and plan to make it on multiple occasions in the future as it was so sweet, fresh and lovely.
1. Start by boiling some rice then draining it once it's cooked and laving it to cool for a while.
2. Drain a tin of mandarin pieces (you may want to keep the juice as it's lovely and helps flavour the rice).
3. Add the mandarin to the rice and mix together, you may also wish to add a bit of mandarin juice here which gives extra flavour and sweetness to the rice as well as softening it up a bit more.
4. Chop a bell pepper into small chunks and stir them into the rice et voila!

Pasta Ideas

Here a two very simple yet delicious pasta salad ideas:

1. Boil the pasta and leave it to cool.
2. Break up some blue cheese (I recommend Danish Blue) and mix it into the pasta making sure each piece is flavoured but the dish has some cheese chunks as well.

1. Boil the pasta and leave it to cool.
2. Chop some pepper into small ish chunks and mix them into the pasta along with some tinned sweetcorn (or any other sweetcorn you like).
3. Season with salt and pepper.

Thank you for reading this post, I hope you have enjoyed seeing these creations and that it has inspired you to make your own Summer salads and/or to give some of these a try (I recommend them!) If you have any Summer salad recommendations for me, let me know. If you enjoyed this post and want to see more from me, follow my social media links to see when I next upload.

Love, Steph x