A Summer Salad

Getting ready to have people over has left me with a couple nights where cooking is the last thing I feel like doing! After all of the cleaning and chasing Ally all around, standing over a hot stove is just sounds kind of... ick. So the other night when it had been an especially hot day I thought a salad might make a good dinner. But how to make a salad into a meal fit for a big man? It turns out I did quite well and I loved the recipe so much I thought I would share it! This is not an Aunt Pearl recipe, but a quickly thrown together Jasmine recipe, and we have a lemon meringue pie from aunt Pearl coming soon. ;)

The salad was a giant mound made up of all sorts of shredded lettuce, feta cheese, chunks of chicken breast, cucumbers, tomatoes, and black olives. To make a dressing I blended feta cheese, olive oil, lemon juice, red wine vinegar, a small bit of agave nectar (honey would also work) and some salt and pepper. The dressing was thick and creamy and just delicious with the chicken and other ingredients! All together it was surprisingly filling, however I am a girl who likes her bread so I felt like it needed a little bread on the side. I warmed up a half a loaf of french bread and to jazz it up I put together a little whipped butter...

Lemon Rosemary Butter

1 stick unsalted butter
1 tsp dried rosemary, crushed
1/2 tsp lemon juice
a little lemon zest
pinch of salt

soften the butter and add the rest of the ingredients. Blend with an electric mixer until it is all mixed well and the butter is "whipped" looking. I served it by placing all of the butter into a heart shaped cookie cutter on a plate. Slowly lift up the cookie cutter and you are left with heart butter! :) What a way to show your sweetie some love.

I wish I had taken some pictures but hunger got the better of us and we dove right in to eating before I thought of a camera. The butter was just delicious and really went with the tart flavor of my dressing on the salad. All in all, very refreshing and very easy! Plus, no standing over a hot stove which was the goal all along.