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Crunchy Summer Salad

This salad was created out of a need to eat up a bunch of vegetables in the fridge and a desire to make something using only locally grown produce. The end result was a deliciously healthy salad that's easy to make and is great for those summer days when we don't want to eat something heavy.

Ingredients
  

  • 12 cherry or grape tomatoes halved
  • 1 cucumber sliced and quartered
  • ¼ cup white onion diced
  • 1 cup napa cabbage rough chopped
  • 1 cup collards rough chopped
  • 2 tbsp basil oil (thinned out pesto will also work)
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • celery leaves for garnish

Instructions
 

  • Cut tomatoes into halves and add to a medium to large sized bowl. For longer/larger tomatoes, cut into thirds.
  • Slice and quarter a cucumber (you can peel it if you prefer, but we kept the skin on).
  • Dice ¼ cup of a white onion and it add to the bowl of cucumbers and tomatoes.
  • Rough chop a cup of collards and a cup of napa cabbage. Toss them into the bowl.
  • Mix all of the ingredients with the basil oil and olive oil until everything is evenly coated.
  • Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve with garnish.

Notes

For this recipe we used whatever we had on hand in the kitchen, so the measurements of ingredients is more of a suggestion than a requirement. If you want more collards and less tomatoes, go for it!
If you don't have basil oil on hand, don't worry, it's very easy to make! In a food processor blend together ½ cup fresh basil leaves (stemmed and washed), ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil, 2 garlic cloves, ½ teaspoon salt, a pinch of red pepper flakes, and a tablespoon of water.