Salad days

The weather these days is warm, although this morning it was cool enough to open the doors and windows and use the attic fan to pull air into the house. LOML and I loved the coolness, although strangely many of the parents at the pool seemed almost to be complaining about it!

Today felt like a day to eat salad (and also a day to eat steak, so not a perfectly healthy meal!)  We'd bought a package of "harvest mix" on our last trip to Trader Joe's: a melange of quinoa, baby chickpeas, orzo, and other similarly sized (and cooking-time-related) items.  I decided to cook it up and mix it into a salad: and it was quite magnificent!

1 1/4 cups Harvest mix salad
1 3/4 cups chicken broth

1/2 lb Trader Joe's Harvest Mix
Two ripe tomatoes, seeded, chopped into quarter inch dice
1 red bell pepper, chopped into quarter inch dice
1 serrano chili pepper, seeded, finely chopped
4-5 inches of hothouse or "English" cucumber, chopped into quarter inch dice
2 cups pineapple, cut into quarter inch dice
Handful fresh mint, coarsely chopped




Rice wine vinegar
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Cook the harvest mix according to the package directions (simmer in 1 3/4 cups water or chicken stock for 10 minutes, covered).

Mix the vegetables and the mint together.

Make a dressing from 1 part rice wine vinegar to two parts olive oil, salt and pepper to taste: pour half over the vegetables, half over the drained harvest mix, then stir the vegetables and the mix together.

LOML was unsure about the addition of the pineapple, so I left it out at first: but at my urging she mixed some of it in, and pronounced it delicious!

Yours, glad to share a new recipe,
N.