You and your baby doll/better go to the beach

Oh wait, I already made that joke once this year. My bad.

So. Hey, SALAD.

We got a pint of mixed cherry tomatoes and three separate bags of baby greens in the CSA box. Clearly we were meant to eat capacious salad.

But wait! We also got the aforementioned pears in the CSA box. Pears and tomatoes are both good, but they pretty clearly require two separate salads.

Ok. Two salads.

Summer salad

mesclun mix/baby spinach
cherry and grape tomatoes
good vinaigrette
salt, pepper
seared shrimp if you want it

Wash and dry greens; rip them up; strew them artfully across a plate. Toss with a little vinaigrette to coat. If you have any fresh basil, you might want to rip some of that up and add it too.

Cut tomatoes into halves or quarters; add them to the salad.

If you want shrimp, sear them in a little olive oil and add them to the salad. I am obviously a little obsessed with shrimp lately, so I went for it. If you don't want shrimp, it's totally fine to just leave them out. You could also use something totally different, like garlic croutons, sautéed red onion, toasted pine nuts, or cheese of some sort. I bet some cubes of seared halloumi would be really good.

Add salt, pepper, and maybe a finishing few drops of dressing.

Eat it!

Fall salad

mesclun mix/baby spinach
ripe pear
pecans or walnuts
dried blueberries/other fruit
just pepper
dressing: lemon juice and olive oil, or maybe poppyseed

Wash, dry, and arrange greens as above.

Core your pear and cut it into pleasing chunks. Strew them across the greens. Add a handful or two of dried fruit. We have these awesome dried wild blueberries from the food co-op, so that's what I used. Most kinds of dried fruit would work well, though: cherries, cranberries, figs, apricots. Of course there are also fresh figs out now, and we all know how I feel about fresh figs.

Break some pecans or walnuts up coarsely. Toast them quickly in a little frying pan, tossing frequently to avoid burning. Seriously, nuts burn in about two seconds, so be careful and watch them closely! It should take maybe 3-4 minutes on medium-high heat to get a golden brown toast. I used mostly pecans with a few walnuts mixed in, but probably all kinds of different nuts would work well. Slivered almonds would be good with a cranberry or cherry salad, and pistachios would be good with figs or apricots.

Let the nuts cool slightly before adding them to your salad. Then pepper it, dress it however you like, and eat it.

John had this salad with no dressing at all, but I think I would use at least a squeeze of lemon. If you like heavier dressings, poppyseed would probably be really good. Maybe even balsamic vinaigrette?

Salad!