Some Simple Summer Salads

Using that delicious dill dressing, you can add it to your potato salad as a mayonnaise alternative.  It makes for a great salad.  I used the dressing I made from the previous post, found here and added onion.

The night we had the potato salad, I also made some roasted asparagus and tossed it with mini tomatoes, some balsamic, garlic powder, S&P and oil.   It was heavenly! A simple summer salad idea for yah.

Tahini Potato Salad

I love alternatives to mayo.  Sometimes you want something different then the normal potato salad with mayo, this is the ticket.  Its very flavorful and scrumptious.  Experiment with the amounts of lemon juice and dill etc to get it to the flavor you like.

Great for taking on a picnic.  Which, this summer, we have been doing a lot of.  Happiness!  Its been so hot though, the only places we usually go is where there is somewhere to get wet.  Much better that way!

Tahini Potato Salad

5 large potatoes
1/4 cup dill, chopped
1/2 cup tahini
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 cloves garlic smashed, then minced
salt and pepper
3 green onions, sliced

Peel and cut potatoes into bite sized portions.  Cook until tender.

In a large bowl combine tahini and lemon juice, stir until it is thoroughly combined.  Add in dill and minced garlic.  Stir in potatoes when still warm.  This will help the fats melt a little and move easily throughout.  Mix in green onions.  Serve warm or chilled.  If you serve it from the refrigerator, give it some time to come to room temperature.  It will taste much better that way.  

Dilled Cucumber Salad

Today was the day of the cucumber. I made bread and butter pickles, then I made refrigerator pickles and what cucumbers I had left, I made this cucumber salad.  I have eaten this type of cucumber salad my whole life.  As far as I know, it is a Polish recipe.  My Grandmother was from Poland.  She made it.  My Mom always made it and now I make it too.  Dont know why it has not found its way onto the blog.  No worries, here it is.  Recorded for the kids and all of you.

DILLED CUCUMBER SALAD

5 cups of sliced cucumbers, ends cut off
1 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons Kosher salt
2 tablespoons fresh dill
1 small onion, preferably a purple onion
pepper to taste

Sprinkle the salt all over the cucumbers and onion, let it sit for about 20 to 30 minutes.  The salt will pull moisture from the cucumbers.  If you dont do this, the sour cream will get watery.  But if you eat it fast enough it doesn't really matter.  I have done it both ways. It really is better if you salt them first.

After the cucumbers have lost some of their juice, rinse them off, squeeze them out and place in serving bowl.  Mix in dill and sour cream.  Season with pepper as desired.

Better Butter

What could possibly be better than the flavor of butter?  Flavored butter.  Oh, yeah. 

Sadly, because of some issues with my SD reader, I lost a pic of this wonderful butter on some carrots I made for dinner.  Very simple yet very delicious. I have it on my toast in the morning.  You don't need much butter to get that flavor POW!

A friend of mine likes to slather some on her steak after grilling. She uses store bought.  The store bought ones are very good mind you.  Homemade is way more frugal though and you can control your ingredients.

I found some sriracha salt recently and somehow it has been making its way into a lot of my food.  Lots of flavor and not really all that spicy either. 

Flavored Butter

4 ounces butter
1 teaspoon dill weed
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes of sriracha salt
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt if you are using unsalted butter

Beat all the ingredients together.  The flavor will be maximized the next day after sitting for a while.