Diet Friendly Fast Food

I loved everything about this easy salad with green beans, tomatoes, and Feta!

(For Phase One Fridays I highlight Phase One recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites, and this amazing Green Bean, Tomato, and Feta Salad Oreganato is something I would happily eat over and over all summer long.  If you have green beans in your garden, please make this salad right away before the beans are gone!)

Yes, I know there have been a lot of salads and garden vegetables around here lately, but when I made this salad with green beans, tomatoes, feta cheese, and a vinegary-lemony-oregano dressing, I loved it so much that I thought I should share the recipe while people still had garden green beans. I actually found this recipe in a Woman's World Magazine when I sat waiting for an appointment, and I got the receptionist to photocopy the page for me! I added the the Feta, which I thought was a perfect flavor with this salad, but what really makes this is the tangy dressing that has both red wine vinegar and fresh lemon juice. If you have garden beans or good fresh beans from the store, please make this salad!

(For Phase One Fridays I feature Phase One Recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites, and I love this Shrimp and Black Bean Salad with Cilantro, Cumin, and Lime.  Photos for this recipe were updated May 2014 and I'm so happy to have better photos for this favorite salad!)

Shrimp, black beans, cilantro, and lime. It's a combination that goes together so well that you could easily come up with hundreds of recipes featuring this quartet. I bought a big bag of cooked frozen shrimp from Costco, and this was a salad I made for lunch after thinking to myself, hmmm, what else can I make with shrimp? The ingredients were determined by what I had in the fridge and pantry, as well as a well-documented love for cilantro, and this recipe has cilantro in the dressing and more cilantro in the salad, which is just fine with me.  If you're not a cilantro fan I think you could still get a pretty good result with thinly sliced green onion replacing the cilantro in the dressing and just using a little more green onion in the salad, but I wouldn't use parsley in place of cilantro here.

Today the temperature in Utah is supposed to get above 90F so we've definitely entered the season for warm-weather eating, and lately I've had pasta salad on my mind.  It seems like there are a lot of ho-hum combinations that give pasta salad a bad name, but I like the challenge of coming up with something that's really good, and I loved the Whole Wheat Spaghetti Salad I made recently.  Then I excitedly discovered Delallo Organic Whole Wheat Orcchiette at the store in my new town, and my mind started spinning with thoughts of making a really drool-worthy vegetarian pasta salad.   This Whole Wheat Pasta Salad with Roasted Asparagus, Red Bell Pepper, and Mushrooms has wonderful flavors from roasting the vegetables, and then I added this fun pasta shape, sliced green onion, chopped parsley, kicked-up Italian dressing and coarsely grated Parmesan to make a truly fantastic salad.  If you can't find the whole wheat Orecchiette I used, just use any smallish whole wheat pasta shape, even macaroni.  And if you're seeing this at a time of year when asparagus is not going to be available or you're not an asparagus fan, I'd just increase the mushrooms and red peppers and you'd still have a delicious salad.  (If you skip the Parmesan and use a vegan dressing, this salad could easily be vegan.)

Shrimp Salad is a family tradition with the Dennys, and my Shrimp and Macaroni Salad is something I used to make regularly for my dad, as well as making it for family parties for many years.  There are also other good shrimp salads on the blog, but I wouldn't dare substitute any of them for Shrimp and Macaroni Salad at a family gathering.  Until now.  This Lemony Shrimp Salad with Avocado, Heart of Palm, and Feta was so satisfying that I think most of my family would happily devour it.  (There are a couple of people in the family who hate avocados, go figure.)  The day I tested this recipe with Jake, we tried it out on a friend who stopped by, and she gave it two very enthusiastic thumbs up.  I'm sure I'll never stop making Shrimp and Macaroni Salad for my family, but when I want a phase one treat with shrimp, this is the salad I'll be making.

(For Phase One Fridays I highlight Phase One recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites, and when my friend Becky from Vintage Mixer included cucumbers on her list of Seasonal Produce Guide for July, I remembered this amazing cucumber salad.  This salad is really a wow; hope you enjoy!)

My friend Al Church is not only a former restaurant critic and food writer, but he's also one of the most food-savvy people I know, so when Al offered to make his famous Hungarian Cucumber Salad with me and share it with Kalyn's Kitchen readers, I couldn't wait to try the salad.  I haven't eaten that much authentic Hungarian food, but it's definitely on my list of places to visit, and I love the combination of sweet paprika and sour cream that's used in so many dishes in that part of the world.  And of course my love for cucumbers is well-documented on the blog.  I loved everything about this salad, which was almost even better the next morning (when I gobbled up the leftovers for breakfast!)  If you have garden cucumbers right now, or even if you need to make a trip to the store for the long English cucumbers we used, you must make this right away!

Up your antioxidants with this health and delish nutty salad.

Makes 6 servings – Cal per serve – 145

Source: http://www.losebabyweight.com.au/recipes/lamb-and-beetroot-salad/