Mediterranean Salad

​It is officially summer now! Which to me means; summer vacation, salads, BBQ's, camping, swimming and LOTS of fresh produce. I don't know about you, but for me in the summer my appetite goes away. I think it is the heat or maybe my body just trying to conserve it's energy. So for me a big heavy meal is not what is usually on the menu.

​We are in the beautiful Okanagan, I wrote a post about it back in October about my Okanagan side. I love going to my home town in the summer and being able to gorge on all the fresh produce. So naturally yesterday my mind went to helping prepare supper by making a super fresh locally grown Mediterranean inspired salad.

​In the salad the red onions are from my parents garden, the cucumbers, tomatoes and Italian parsley is locally grown that we picked up at local market. Then the mozzarella cheese, chickpeas and olives are just from the local grocery store. This salad was fresh and tasted of summer to me. It was also 35 Celsius yesterday, too hot for me to eat anything that was hot! 

Mediterranean Salad

Ingredients:

​1 can of chick peas, drained and rinsed
1 can of sliced black olives
5 large tomatoes
1 large English cucumber
​1 large red onion, or 3 small red onions
1 1/2 cups of 1/2 inch cubes of mozzarella cheese
​1 cup of fresh Italian parsley, diced up
​Kraft Greek Feta and Oregano Dressing
​A pinch of salt and pepper

Directions:

​Wash and dice up the tomatoes, red onions and cucumber into 1/2 inch to 1 inch pieces.

​Open the chick pea and olive cans. Drain and rinse them. Set them aside.

​Add all the ingredients into a large bowl, then squeeze as much of the dressing as you would like on top. Toss the ingredients all together.

​Enjoy!

​My sister brought up a super good point, this salad would be awesome with some spiral noodles or even shell noodles. It would make the perfect pasta salad as well. A few different variations to this are:

You can add feta cheese instead
​Add quinoa
Add green onions
​Add green, yellow, red and orange peppers
Add goat cheese

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer as much as we are so far!

​Happy Monday!

Mediterranean Salad  ​
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