I often lack restraint when shopping, especially for groceries. When I went to the farmers’ market a week ago I knew that I would be leaving town in nine days (two days until LA!), but that didn’t stop me from buying way too much food. It was cheap, it looked good, and it was my first time at the farmer’s market all summer and I simply could not control myself. I have managed to polish a lot of it off by eating every meal at home for the last week with the exception of breakfast yesterday, and a string of those meals were big salads that were largely composed of my market finds. While none of these salad combinations are mind-blowing, I thought I would tell you about them because they all use the same ingredients in completely different ways. The results are two thumbs up and one Kirsten-sized thumb down. Read on.
The constants:
Lettuce
Tomatoes
Avocado
Feta
Radishes
The variables:
Bacon
Corn
Refried beans
Tortilla chips
Salad 1: BLT Plus

Bacon, lettuce, tomato, avocado, radishes, feta, oil & vinegar. Simple, summery, delicious.
Salad 2: Fiesta

Lettuce, tomato, radishes, corn, feta, guacamole, leftover refried beans, bottom of the bag of tortilla chips. Not pictured: a lot of hot sauce. I will eat anything that remotely resembles Mexican food, so I really enjoyed this salad.
Salad 3: Mess of Roasted Vegetables
I had this idea that a salad with a bunch of roasted vegetables would be awesome. I spent all day peeking in on the tomatoes that were slowing roasting in the oven, I discovered that you can roast corn in the oven with the husks still on, I made a shortcut version of a really good vegetable mix that we’d made around Thanksgiving, and I burned my lungs with the fumes from dry-roasting serrano chiles in a skillet. The result? One of the worst salads I have ever had. If it weren’t for an abysmal salad that I made the first night I was home in Iowa last week, this would be the worst salad I’ve ever made. Actually, the salad I made in Iowa was terrible because I used expired salad dressing that tasted like dust, and this salad was terrible because all of the ingredients I threw together just did not work. Based on the fact that my cooking skills blew it on this one, I think it should win the prize for the worst salad I’ve ever made. I ended up throwing half of it away, and I have a pretty high tolerance for not-so-great food, especially when I am the one who made it.
The makings for oven roasted tomatoes. You cannot go wrong with these, with the exception of this salad.



I was convinced that the corn tasted kind of funky, but I’ve eaten boiled ears from the same batch that tasted alright. Maybe cooking them in the oven with the husks on imparted some weird flavor? Or maybe it’s the fact that it’s Minnesota corn and not far superior Iowa corn. I’m not quite sure.

I thought I’d use up some serranos by recreating (and dumbing down) a corn dish that we made at Thanksgiving and loved.

Failure.

Lettuce, roasted tomatoes, avocado, feta, corn/radish/serrano mixture, oil & vinegar.
If it weren’t for heaping pile of the corn mixture, this probably would have been a pretty decent salad. Note to self: piling on a combination of ingredients that don’t taste good is only going to make the salad worse.

A better use for those roasted tomatoes: topping off a slice of ricotta-smeared bread.