I travel a lot for work. A favorite ritual after each trip is to try and bring some of the new flavors back to our table in Haiti. In a small way, it makes these long trips and hard-to-imagine places a little more understandable for our two curious toddlers. This Lebanese Inspired Cucumber & Tomato Salad has been an often requested favorite of Rebecca and the kids since my travels to Lebanon in February.

Lebanon is stunning and amazingly complex for such a small country. The cuisine of Lebanon, like the country itself, sits at the intersection of many major cultural currents. This vibrant salad is my take on the refreshing salads I ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. The ingredients are simple but the result is surprisingly complex, a bright and versatile salad with tangy herb flavor. This salad can be eaten as a main, as a side, wrapped in fresh warm pita bread, or as an accompaniment to grilled meat or cheese. Note that this recipe uses green zatar spice which can be found online, most Middle Eastern groceries, and surprisingly even in Port-au-Prince, Haiti due the large number of a Lebanese and Syrian diaspora in Haiti.

A Caribbean flu hit our household in Haiti this week. First Paul, then me, now the kids. Sigh. During times of illness, my go-to comfort food is the reassuringly simple, cool, and refreshing cucumber. Cucumbers are my vegetable equivalent of chicken soup. As I gradually felt better throughout the week, my cucumber salads became more elaborate and flavorful. This Crisp Thai Cucumber & Peanut Salad, a Thai-inspired riff, is crunchy, sour,  and salty, with a hint of coconut sweetness.

On my way home from work yesterday, I passed a market woman, machann, with a pile of large green skinned avocados spread out in front of her. My bag of ripe avocados in hand, I mulled over dinner the rest of the way home. Later that night, Paul and I munched on a buttery and crisp Avocado Cucumber Salad with Yogurt Lime Sauce under our mango tree as we waited for cooler evening breezes to arrive. 

In high school while browsing for recipes for a Mother’s Day brunch, I was struck by a colorful sounding 'Stoplight Salad' in my Mom’s copy of Simply in Season. My sister and I added it to our Mother’s Day menu that year, and it became a family staple. Through the years, I have created my own version with a bit more of a Southwest flair, swapping in a potent lime-cumin vinaigrette and handfuls of herbs and fruit for contrast. In college, when I needed a dish for a potluck with some Amish friends, I didn’t think twice before whipping up my Southwest Black Bean Salad…what had seemed like a good idea in my dorm room started making me nervous when I saw my garishly bright salad sitting amidst a table of creamy noodle casseroles. Before I could withdraw my food offering, the head cook stuck her spoon in my salad, and I was given a nod of approval, I quietly let out my breath and tried to act nonchalant. Southwest Black Bean Salad is a pungent, bright, and refreshing salad with corn, tomatoes, herbs, and a customizable base of seasonal vegetables and fruit. It has been my most requested recipe over the years, and is an infinity adaptable salad that will be devoured every time. I’d love to hear your favorite combinations! To read more about Simply in Season and our other favorite cookbooks, check out our Bookshelf.

In these dog days of summer, a crisp and refreshing chilled soup is a wonderful thing. Gazpacho, for those unfamiliar, is a type of cold tomato soup that originates in Spain, with many variations in texture and flavor. We love the pure, cool, sweet flavors that develop as garden-fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and onions release their juices and meld together. Chilled Tomato & Vegetable Soup, Gazpacho, is quick and easy to make, especially with a food processor to aid in chopping. Enjoy the fresh bounty of summer and homespun food shared with the ones you love. 

Grilling is our cooking method of choice for these early summer days, but it's not all about the meat.  Actually, our summer diet has tilted vegetarian since we started making this Grilled Greek Salad. I dreamt up this colorful dish in the colder months, with longings of summer. This salad knocked our socks off and had my meat loving husband requesting more. We made Grilled Greek Salad through bitter March sleet, April winds, and May rains. And now finally, with seasonal vegetables and balmy temperatures, we can grill in the sunshine. Unlike some grilled salads, this isn't grilling for cuteness. Grilled Greek Salad is a hefty, hearty entree salad, that relies on the grill to give the peppers, onions, and tomatoes their luscious char, and to add caramel sweetness to tangy halloumi cheese. Topped with kalamata olives and a tart lemon-zest vinaigrette for contrast, this salad is dynamic. Halloumi, for those not familiar, is a hard salty sheep-milk cheese from Cyrpus, a great cooking cheese that keeps its shape and texture at high heats.

On a holiday weekend famous for feasting and barbecues, we wanted to share one of our favorite burgers. These healthy Turkey Feta Burgers with Yogurt Curry Sauce are quick to make, light on fat, and big on flavor. If you are feeling adventurous, you can also substitute the turkey in this recipe for another lean meat like lamb, buffalo, or venison. To top these burgers, we ditch the usual lettuce, and opt instead for the crips fresh accompaniments of cucumber, tomato, and homemade pickled red onions. 

Kale Cobb Salad with Avocado Green Goddess is Paul's favorite salad. Let me back up a step to highlight the significance of this statement. To say Paul is not 'saladly inclined,' is to put it mildly. In fact, the one time I saw Paul order a salad in a restaurant, to my slack-jawed amazement, it turned out he was sick. But Paul's disinclination to eat raw leafy greens has not stopped me in my quest to make a salad that he will love. A few years ago I whipped up this cobb salad, and to my delight, Paul liked it... so much that he requests it for his birthday menu each year. Kale Cobb Salad with Avocado Green Goddess is not a traditional cobb salad, but uses our favorite elements, greens, tomatoes, cucumber, bacon and eggs, and adds avocado and a punchy green dressing loaded with herbs.

Rebecca's all-time favorite sandwich is the Vietnamese Bánh Mì. Our take on this Vietnamese-French fusion classic uses unctuous grilled chicken, tangy pickled vegetables, heaps of cilantro and jalapeno, and a robust mayo sauce. Despite the long ingredient list and exotic heritage, Grilled Chicken Bánh Mì Sandwiches are straightforward to make and can win over even the pickiest of eaters.  

Sorry that our comments have been unavailable. We've resolved the technical glitch and switched to a new service. Thank you for all the wonderful emails! We'd love to keep hearing from you.

What is your favorite sandwich? Where did you eat your favorite Bánh Mì sandwich? 

The first time I made dill pickles was for 250 guests at a friend’s wedding in Germany. It was a few days before the wedding when the groom’s mother, Ana, casually announced that we would be making pickles today. I was set to work sterilizing large buckets to house the heaps of cukes. The call went out to friends and relatives for their gardens' bounty, and pretty soon fresh garden cucumbers and big pungent bunches of dill started arriving at her home. Three days later at the wedding, those cucumbers had transformed into delicious dill pickles. I was in awe!

While my future husband was happily scarfing fry bread tacos in Colorado, I was sweating my 7th grade Home Economics class further north in Canada. To set the scene of my distress, it was the last month of the class and I had just managed to fail my sewing test; a wobbly threaded testament to my poor hand-eye coordination and impatience. My home budgeting project took a financial downturn when my teacher noted that my incorrect math had rendered my fictitious future self seriously overdrawn and facing financial ruin. Next up was the nutrition segment of the class. And it was cook or die. Knowing I had some serious ground to make up, I marshaled my resources and consulted with my Mother. With her menu guidance, I plotted a path to home ec redemption with a meal I hoped would awe my teacher and pass the class. Since my cooking expertise to that point had been largely limited to toast, it was a painful two-day introduction to cooking resulting in an jumbled menu of chilled cucumber soup, shepherd's pie, and dark chocolate mousse.  I don't remember the meal being particularly yummy to my picky teenage palate, but the chilled cucumber soup had my teacher in raptures and won my respite from the shame of failing home ec.  

Chilled cucumber avocado soup is my grown up rendition of that home ec redemption soup. In this summery soup, the avocado and yogurt provide a silky texture to highlight the light vegetal qualities of cucumber.  This soup is a refreshing dish and can be ready in a flash for a starter or a light meal on its own.

Following a weekend of holiday feasting, we usually find ourselves craving something light, and refreshing.  After we had stuffed ourselves to capacity,  these Crab Lettuce Wraps with Spicy Lime Vinaigrette were the refreshing light meal to bring us back from a carb induced holiday daze. While crab is a splurge, this dish allows the sweet and delicate flavor of blue crab to shine. It is worth every penny. If you're truly adventurous, you can buy crab fresh, cook it and remove the meat.  We generally buy a high quality canned crab, which is quick, easy and consistently available. To make these crab wraps, Rebecca used avocado, some stunning watermelon radishes, cucumber, and a sweet and spicy lime vinaigrette. She used hydroponic Bibb lettuce fresh from our CSA for the wraps.   We found these cute little lettuce cups were a neat way of holding this light and healthy crab salad together.

Buckwheat Tabbouleh with Goat Cheese is a light and zippy salad, flush with fiber and herbs. It is quick and easy to make, healthy, filling, and is a great alternative to traditional Bulgar wheat tabbouleh if you're gluten-free. This salad allows the nutty flavor of buckwheat to come through. If you've never tried buckwheat groats before, this is a great place to start.  A word about buckwheat grouts for those unfamiliar with this lovely little grain.  Buckwheat is in fact not related to its' namesake, wheat, and comes from the triangular seed of an herb.  Toasted buckwheat groats are called Kasha; Buckwheat grouts are the raw version.   These little kernels taste nutty and have a firm texture when cooked, they stand up well to lemon vinaigrette and meld deliciously together for a final product that is refreshing and filling. This recipe is adapted from America's Test Kitchen's How Can it be Gluten Free Cookbook. We (but mostly me) at the Hungry Hounds are always searching for an opportunity to add goat cheese to dishes, and this was a perfect opportunity. The goat cheese stepped up the flavor contrast, added richness, and  blended with the other ingredients to make for an earthy, herbaceous mouthful!