Cool salads for a hot summer day

Today I spoiled myself with not one, BUT TWO, of my favorite summer salads. For lunch, I made a strawberry/lettuce salad with poppyseed dressing and for dinner I had a fresh tomato and mozzarella quinoa salad. Here are the recipes in case you care to try them out this summer:


Strawberry Spinach Salad
Fresh spinach
Fresh strawberries, sliced
Almond Slivers
Red onions, thinly sliced
dressing (for large salad)
1/2 cup Mayonnaise
2 T Strawberry Vinegar or white wine vinegar
1/3 cup sugar
2 T poppyseeds
1/4 cup whole milk

The salad is based off of my mom's recipe - when the spinach and strawberries were ripe in the garden, we frequently got to eat this delicious salad during my childhood. Unfortunately, I didn't have spinach today. I had some artisan lettuce (you know, that hearty green and purple leafy lettuce stuff). I didn't have red onions either, so I diced some spring onions. I used Apple Cider Vinegar and I didn't have milk so I used some lemon juice and water to thin the dressing. I also mashed up some strawberries and blended them into the dressing so it was a light pink color and had natural strawberry flavor. It tasted great!

... and the recipe for the Quinoa salad is one my sister found online.

Like my lunch salad, the quinoa salad was also missing some of the required ingredients so I adapted it. I just diced up 4 oz fresh mozzarella, a tomato, 2/3 cup cilantro, and 1/2 cup spring onions to mix with the 1/3 cup cooked quinoa. I like my salad more veggie based than grain based, so you're welcome to play with the proportions. I ran out of lemon juice (since I used most of it in the poppyseed dressing!) so I squeezed fresh lime juice in place of it. The lime went very nicely with the cilantro actually.