doesn’t that look like summertime on a plate?  we need a little summer around here ~ the temp outside on the day i made this summery-looking salad: 9.  sheesh.

here are the ingredients for this chopped salad, created by my good friend martha stewart’s daughter, alexis.  ha ha.

i feel like all of these celebrity chefs are my good friends, honestly.  they taught me how to cut with a big-girl knife, and fast!  and they taught me how to spend copious amounts of time researching, buying, cooking, and eating food ~ instead of doing other things i should have been doing these last 20 years.  like working out, practicing, or cleaning my kitchen.

but i love them all the more for the delicious distraction.

chopped salad okay, before i list the ingredients, let me give you the ones that really matter.  because we all know that if you don’t have green beans, you can substitute some other vegetable.  or if you hate red onion, you can do garlic or something.  so just keep in mind that what makes this dish is the following:

• rice wine vinegar this vinegar is sensational.  it makes this dish, and is the perfect light vinegar for most salads.  so try to get a bottle of this.  i found it in the asian food section.  i didn’t get the seasoned kind.  i just got the regular.
• cilantro if you don’t like cilantro, try parsley or basil.  but it just won’t be as bright.  plus, i can’t find basil anywhere right now.
• everything chopped into tiny pieces seriously, that’s the trick.  so take all your miscellaneous veggies out of the fridge and throw them in!
• my own special treatment i like to prep raw onion in any dish by dicing it first, and letting it sit in vinegar and salt while you’re prepping everything else.  it seasons the whole dish with onion, but takes away the strong bite that most people don’t like about onions.  anyway, thought i’d share if you didn’t do that already.

here’s how make your dressing:  whisk together 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons olive oil, and salt and pepper.  drop in your chopped red onion and let them chill out while you chop everything else…

• green beans (trimmed, diced and boiled for a few minutes, then shocked in an ice bath)
• frozen corn (boiled and cooled ~ just do it with the green beans ~ and make sure you drain those well, of course.  but you knew that, right?
• add chopped tomatoes, red onion, red and yellow bell pepper, jalapeno, hot house cucumber, and whatever else you are dying to have in your chopped salad.  drop the veggies as you go into your dressing and red onion mixture. no need to dirty up any other bowls.
• add cilantro, kosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper and toss!

this salad lasted about 5 days in my fridge.  we ate almost all of it, and the hub actually made scrambled eggs with it one day.  he just drained the veggies well and added them to the eggs along with some cheddar cheese.  how healthy and bright and fresh!

the next time i make this salad, i will probably skip the green beans.  i don’t like the process of blanching, then putting in an ice bath, then draining well, etc.  i just don’t like green beans enough to do all that work.  and wouldn’t this dish be yummy with black kalamata olives?