Orange beet salad

Ingredients:
arugula
One can of beets
Two large oranges - peeled and sliced
About 1/8th of a red onion - in thin slices

Dressing:
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
Grey pompon mustard

In a bowl, I arranged a bunch of arugula as a bed of greens. Then I layered orange slices, bet slices, red onion slices - two layers of that. Then I sprinkled a little salt over the top. Finally, I poured the dressing over the top, although I personally didn't end up using al of the dressing i prepared.

I modified this recipe from Simply Recipes, mostly replacing the fresh beets with the canned beets. This salad was refreshing and quite delicious- even to someone who doesn't like vegetables usually (my cousin)

Raw Mango Avocado salad

My modified version of this recipe (to make it totally raw) was
2 large mangos, chopped. (I peeled it one time, but I think the peel is delish, so I'd keep it the next time).
2 medium avocados, chopped
1 lime, juiced.
1/4 cup of cilantro finely chopped - or really to taste.

After that, just mix all the ingredients. The combination of flavors here is incredible. All fresh ingredients makes it wonderfully raw, too1

Original recipe

Orange Quinoa salad

"Mix cooked couscous or quinoa with orange zest and juice, olive oil, maybe honey, sliced oranges, raisins or dried cranberries, chopped red onion and chopped almonds. Serve over greens, or not."

This salad was not very exciting. I made it with quinoa, cranberries and no honey with friends; the large quantities of left overs may have turned me off in the end. It definitely got better with age.

I'm curious what it would be like with different oranges.

It's also from the New York Times article.

Chickpea Tabbouleh

"Roughly chop cooked or canned chickpeas (you can pulse them, carefully, in a food processor) and toss with olive oil, lemon juice, lots of chopped fresh parsley and mint, and a few chopped tomatoes. Call this chickpea tabbouleh."

I gotta say, laziness set in and so I did not chop or pulse the chickpeas. This recipe was okay, but I think it lacked some depth. If I made it again, I'd up the amount of parsley to make it almost absurd and eliminate the olive oil.

This recipe is also from that New York Times Article

Mustardy Cucumber Salad

A nice cucumber salad: Slice cucumbers thin (if they’re fat and old, peel and seed them first), toss with red onions and salt, then let sit for 20 to 60 minutes. Rinse, dry, dress with cider vinegar mixed with Dijon mustard; no oil necessary.

The quality of the mustard I think is more important than I give it credit for. It reminds me a lot of this Whole Food's Recipe. My mandoline slicer makes both of these recipes significantly easier.

Both of these salads are great as left overs the next day.

Also, for those raw foodists out there, I used Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar and Himalayan Sea Salt. Of course, the mustard makes it not raw; I'm not really sure how to work around that.

To find the full list of summer salad's, check out the New York Times post here