summer grocery staples
and two summer salad recipes
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Summertime is here, with its hot lazy days, faces and bodies glowing like full moons with salty sweat, hair wavy from swimming, the deep sweet smell of melons as you walk through the market. My favorite time of year, I feel like I can breathe again in summer. Easy warmth, less structure to the days, stretching in a seemingly endless and inviting way. Possibilities abound.
In summer more than any other season, I gravitate towards easy, easy meals packed with produce. It’s hot and I don’t want to spend a bunch of time in the kitchen- I utilize my instant pot for things like beans, potatoes, and beets- plug it in outside so the steam doesn’t have to heat up my kitchen when I release it. Produce here is at its peak, pristine and bursting with flavor, requiring very little to dress it up. I rely on a few meals that I can make bigger batches of and reinvent through the week by adding a component or two. Here is a small list of my usual suspects:
burrito or sushi or peanut sauce bowls
crushed puy lentils with tahini & cumin with rice and tomato/cucumber salad
greek salad, lemony chickpeas + dolmas