A Taste of Summer

My roommates and I take turns cooking dinner. Since I started this blog, I've been cooking every night because it's spring break and I'm the only one of us on campus (oh the woes of internships). But once my girls return, I will have much less to post about. Granted, I haven't decided on any 'rules' as to what I will or won't post here, so some of their recipes very well may make an appearance. After all, they are college girls as well, and they will be making some grub.

Until then however, I've decided to prepare by posting parts of meals instead of the whole thing so I can spread one meal over several days conceivably. (We broke, hippie college kids; all about conservation.) For example, the homemade tartar sauce from my Fish sans Chips post could have flown solo. Alas, the lessons learned from heavily condensed blogging.

So with out further ado, a yummy (easy) summer salad, and G family favorite:

All you need is cucumber, onion and oil based salad dressing.

Yup.

That's it.

If you're fancy you could make your own salad dressing. But if you check back for my next post about the main course of this meal, you'll understand why I wanted a quick and easy side.

Slice the cucumber and onion really thin. For just me I used about half a cucumber (what? I like cucumber.) and a quarter of a yellow onion. The thin part is really key. This is pretty much the only thing you have to do to make this so don't get lazy. If you cut too thick they won't absorb the flavor of the salad dressing and that defeats the point.

I'm going to be honest with you. I don't know anything about the differences between cucumbers. I know there are different varieties but they all taste more or less the same to me (except pickling cucumbers, but if your supermarket is selling those in the regular produce section I think you have bigger issues to work out). 

However, I can tell the difference between onions and I would recommend vidalias. They're much sweeter than other onions and lend themselves more to eating raw. I am personally a fan of raw onion with other flavors, but I know many people aren't, so this recipe would probably be a bit overpowering for most. If you can't get your hands on vidalias--they're grown exclusively in Georgia (the state not the country) so I think they can be hard to find elsewhere out of season--just use less onion and--must I say it again?--cut THIN slices. 

Next up, toss it all in a bowl and douse with your favorite oil based salad dressing. Creamy ones like ranch won't work because they won't soak into the veggies, but any other store bought dressing will work. I used Italian, but Greek is also very good. If I remember correctly, my mom just uses oil and vinegar, but we don't currently have any vinegar in the house (are you seeing a theme with my meals? If you don't have an ingredient, improvise). 

That probably took me all of 10 minutes to make. Just make it first and pop it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes so the flavors can really soak into the veggies (hint: again, if you don't love raw onion, the longer you wait, the more the oil and spices in the dressing can mellow out that flavor). 

And it really does taste like summer!