Sept. 17: Corn salads for end-of-summer goodness

Well, I'm officially mailing it in. While Jen and I were texting random nonsense yesterday, and accusing each other of creating challenging blog post topics (it's a blog challenge, doh!), I threw out the idea that maybe a recipe didn't have to be one that we'd actually MADE. Rather, it could be one that we are hoping to make at some point in the near future (who would know if that never happened, the blog police?).

At the time, I had every intention of coming home from our weekend away and making one of the recipes you'll see below. But, I'm not sure what was really going on upstairs (add that to the things to work on: be more realistic about expectations), as time went skittering away quite rapidly upon our return home last evening.

So, I submit to you, three salads (see, not just one!) that I have every intention of making before this season's corn is gone for good. (Which means, in the next week or so!)

Summer vegetable potato salad

Roasted corn Caesar salad

Charred corn and cherry tomato salad

The biggest question is: which one should I make first?

What's on your list to make before the summer produce runs out? Or have you already transitioned to fall food? Tell me where you're at with seasonal eating!

Jen and I (and now my mom and Lisa too!) are blog challenging throughout September. You can catch her blog over at Stuff Jen Says. If you want to write along with us, give me a shout and I'll send you the blog prompts.

Sept. 4: Kale makes me happy, but you already knew that!

Another kale salad? Why the heck not! My love of kale has been well-documented this summer, and adding yet another salad to the mix just seemed to make sense. Though, truthfully, this post ends up being more about the dressing than the salad... 

Originally the plan was for the kale caesar salad (see the video below). Then I realized I'm not really a fan of anchovies, and wasn't in the mood to buy them just for this salad. Capers aren't something I love love, either. So I took the idea, and the general concept from the recipe that PBS posted (one of their most clicked on recipes in the month of August!) and adapted to suit my tastes.



Pretty funny pup, eating kale, eh? I love this video. It's a very happy salad-making moment. (I put the happy in there just for you, Jen.)

I also had a really great kale salad at a juice/salad place in Seattle earlier this summer, and have been meaning to recreate that combination of flavors all summer. So this salad really turned into an amalgam of 1) what is around and fresh, 2) my taste memories and 3) any excuse to throw a handful of parmesan cheese into a bowl and call it healthful!

Kale salad with corn, avocado and tomato
Serves 2, as a side dish, 1 if you're me
3 large handfuls of prepped kale--destemmed, roughly chopped or ripped
1 large tomato, diced
1/2 avocado, cubed
1 ear corn, roasted and cut off the cob
1 cup croutons, homemade preferable but storebought is allowed ;)
1/3 cup shredded parmesan
Salt and pepper to taste

Dressing
2 shallots, peeled and roughly chopped
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1 large bunch parsley, washed
1 egg yolk
2 tsp. dijon mustard
2 Tbsp. sherry vinegar
2/3 cup olive oil

Put all the dressing ingredients into a blender and whiz on high until blended well.

Put the kale in a large mixing bowl and drizzle the dressing generously over the leaves. Massage the kale with your hands until the leaves wilt and the dressing is very well integrated.

Add the rest of the salad ingredients except the parmesan, and toss to combine. Add a bit more dressing to the salad to ensure that the additional ingredients get coated well with dressing. Add the parmesan last and toss one more time, then season to taste with salt and pepper.

This recipe makes more dressing than needed for one salad. Put the rest of the dressing in a jar and refrigerate. Its pretty greenness will call to you from the fridge!

This salad and dressing are both keepers. I love the bite of the shallots and garlic, as well as the green goddess appearance from the parsley. I will be tossing this dressing on many a salad in the near future!

Enjoy. These waning days of summer, all I want is the good, fresh produce that I know is going to vanish before we know it. Poof.

Jen and I (and now my mom and Lisa too!) are blog challenging throughout September. You can catch her blog over at Stuff Jen Says. If you want to write along with us, give me a shout and I'll send you the blog prompts.

The gospel according to kale

I am in the midst of a love affair with kale. I eat it every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I talk about kale, and get kale articles sent to me via email and Facebook. I am a kale nut. And I make no apologies! I get a little bit of a ribbing about it at work, but only because I eat kale salads in front of co-workers. If you don't want to be teased, eat in private.

Kale shows up in my smoothie every morning:

In salads I've enjoyed many variations. There's the one below (a twist with a basil-tomato-parmesan flavor) and a peanut-sauce dressed version as well:

And, finally, I recently broke down and made kale chips. These have been popping up as a healthy option, all over the interwebs. I've read a number of different takes on how best to make them, and decided I would give it a whirl, plain and simple, none of the fussy, flavored types.

I made a batch, and husband and I nibbled away. I made another batch the next day, and have made them a few times since. Each time I make them, they disappear. I love the flavor and the texture, I'll just be honest. Mock me all you want. :)

I used this recipe from David Lebowitz, and his rationale on heat made a lot of sense to me. I went with 350 for the temperature (rather than the widely touted 425) and it took about 35-40 minutes (with a mid-time rack switch) for them to crisp up to the desired chip texture. I would recommend playing with your oven and getting to know what temperature works, what timing works, etc.

Before and after oven time for the kale chips. Nothing like a little time in an oven to get the green out and crisp up!

Give it a try, and let me know how it goes. I would love to know what you think too. (And if you're local and need kale, give me a holler! We have kale to share.)

A-Z blogging challenge: K is for Kale

I know, I know, kale is all the rage, kinda like quinoa. But that doesn't mean it's not worthy of all the recent love and adulation. Kale is a powerhouse.

Much like any other produce, kale that comes from a garden patch tastes exponentially better than storebought kale. It's true; I hope you give it a try if you haven't already. There are some really great, pest-resistent kale varieties that are tender and long-lasting into the heat of the summer; my two favorites are Tuscan kale and Red Russian kale. If your grocery store is anything like most of the grocery stores where I live, it's curly green kale and curly red kale, period. And imagine how long ago it was picked... yep, it's the garden for me, whenever possible.

Right now the garden is not quite there, yet. If we had overwintered our kale (which would have been possible with the mild winter we enjoyed), maybe. But we didn't. So when I discovered a box of baby kale in the produce section recently, I did a happy dance. Making the assumption that tiny would equal flavorful turned out well in this case. I have been meaning to make a version of a salad with kale and shaved Brussels sprouts that's been making the rounds on Pinterest lately (Costco even has one, bagged, I believe), so when the letter "K" approached in the alphabet blogging challenge, it was my perfect excuse to bust out the salad supper.

Kale, Brussels sprouts and asparagus salad
Serves 1 as a meal, 2 as a side
2 cups baby kale leaves
6 Brussels sprouts, sliced very thinly (if you have a mandoline, bust it out)
6 stalks asparagus, steamed and cooled to room temperature
1/2 cup toasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped
1/4 cup blue cheese, crumbled
3 Tbsp. simple vinaigrette
Salt and pepper to taste

Wash and pat dry the kale. Slice the Brussels sprouts, as thinly as possible; if you don't have a mandoline, the best method would be to halve the sprout lengthwise, then slice thinly--I sliced them whole with the mandoline and that worked very well. (Careful for the fingertips!)

Chop the asparagus into 1/2 inch pieces. Put in a medium size bowl, and add the hazelnuts and blue cheese; drizzle the vinaigrette over the mixture and toss well. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to plates and serve.

Side note about the Brussels sprouts: don't be frightened. I know many people who avoid the vegetable, having had atrocious dishes at the holidays where they've been over/wrongly cooked. Raw, they are just baby cabbages, so think of this as a kind of coleslaw! They really provided an excellent flavor counterpoint to the kale and worked very well with the blue cheese and hazelnuts (well, what doesn't work well with blue cheese and hazelnuts, really?).

If you are not lucky enough to find baby kale, which is very tender, regular kale will work fine, but you'll need to treat it a bit differently. Have you ever massaged raw kale? It's a fabulous trick to soften kale and makes excellent use of larger kale leaves, once you've taken out the center spine.

We also steam kale, put it in soups and smoothies, and kale chips are on the list to make soon--I hear great things about them. What's your favorite way to eat kale?

What's this A-Z business about? Check out my kick-off post. And stay tuned for the random joy and nonsense I concoct during the month of April!

A-Z blogging challenge: A is for Asian-inspired salad

Sometimes the menu mood calls for a crunchy salad, full of vegetables and lightly dressed. Some might call the following dish a coleslaw--I waffle between a chopped salad and, yes, coleslaw. Though, while many coleslaws get weighed down with heavy, sweet, mayo-laden dressings, this version keeps it light and tangy. I often mix the main salad contents up with whatever vegetables are around--asparagus will be a wonderful addition when it is available here locally in the next month or so! Also, colored peppers (red, yellow, orange) make a lovely and vibrant addition in the summer months!

Asian-inspired salad 
Serves 8-10 as a side dish
1 cup cucumber, quartered and sliced thinly
1 bunch radishes, halved and sliced thinly
1/2 head green cabbage (or a bag of coleslaw from the produce section), chopped fine
1 cup peapods, cut into 1/4-inch slices
1/2 cup carrots, shredded, or baby carrots sliced thinly
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped finely

Dressing
5 tablespoons canola oil
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon lime juice

Chop all the vegetables and mix together thoroughly in a large mixing bowl.

Mix the dressing ingredients in a small bowl, whisk vigorously to blend well.

Pour the dressing over the vegetables and toss to coat. Serve immediately, or chill until ready to serve.

The bonus of this salad is that it doesn't immediately break down as many other salads do--especially greens-based salads. I was pleased to have some as leftovers the day following a stirfry, springroll and salad feast, and the vegetables still had a great deal of crunch. How often can you say that about a salad?

Enjoy!

What's this A-Z business about? Check out my kick-off post. And stay tuned for the random joy and nonsense I concoct during the month of April!

Salads of the season

t's hard to believe it's already more than a couple of weeks since girlfriend Kate came to town and we staycationed for a couple of days. It was lovely, and our time together so looked forward to, and then in a blip (but a very relaxing blip) it was over...

One of our meal outings was to a dinner event that Kate had participated in last year, called Outstanding in the Field. The setting was lovely, the food fresh and local and tasty, and the group of friends that Kate invited for the meal (this was a wee bit belated birthday celebration) entirely lovely.

One of the dishes from the evening that got the most ooohs and ahhs was an apricot fattoush, and I instantly knew that given the state of our apricot tree, I would be making this at home, many times.

For some strange reason, I knew that the herb was mint, but as I went to make it for myself at home, later, all I heard in my head was "dill." And in true Sher fashion, I of course didn't look back at the picture from the dinner, so my ratio of greens to bread is very different as well. But, I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed my take on the salad immensely.

Apricot, arugula and chevre salad
Serves one as a meal or two as an accompaniment
3 cups arugula mixture with some additional greens (in my case, a few basil leaves as well)
1 cup homemade baguette croutons
1 lemon cucumber, peeled, quartered and sliced
6 apricots, pitted and quartered
2 Tbsp dill, very roughly chopped off the stem
1/3 cup thinly sliced Walla Walla Sweet Onions
2 Tbsp light dressing of olive oil, garlic and citrus balsamic
1/2 cup chevre, crumbled (the original salad had feta listed, but it is such a fresh, soft feta, I thought I could get away with chevre, and it was very yummy of course)
Salt and pepper to taste

Toss the greens with the dressing in a medium bowl and makes sure the leaves are well coated. Add the apricots, croutons, cucumber and dill and mix again; add the chevre and toss gently. Turn out onto a serving plate or platter (this would double nicely for a dinner party), and add a bit more chevre to the top, as seems appropriate (when is additional chevre NOT appropriate?).

Enjoy!

Of course, as soon as I was done photographing the salad for the sake of the experiment, out came the figs and I halved up a number of those for on top as well! They went extremely well with all the other ingredients, and added to my overall enjoyment of the salad, definitely.

The following day I felt the need to mix it up a bit further. Same greens, same croutons, but I dressed it in the arugula pesto I've been enjoying, and added blue cheese instead of chevre. Also, I replaced the apricots with nectarines, and kept the figs (of course!).

Quite a heavenly lunch.

Tis the season for salad appreciation, and I am embracing it fully! Hope you enjoy the flavors of the season, too!

A few more photos from the evening, before it fades from memory...

To the left side is the airstream that the crew travels in (and Megan wanted to take home) and to the 

right is the outdoor kitchen.

Isn't that purple fabulous?

I made a friend at the farm.

Kate and her lovelies.

Strawberry salads, forever

ow many bowls of strawberries can one eat, really? That's a rhetorical question. But one that I've been asking myself--a lot!--as we scoop the sweet berries rather regularly to top cereal... ice cream... just to eat ad hoc, one at a time. When our strawberries arrive, they REALLY arrive. I spent an hour picking the other night prior to the monsoon, and came inside with upwards of 10 pounds to eat, freeze, eat and eat some more.

As it's been documented here in past posts, I am alone in this household in my love of fruit on/in a salad. Fruit salad itself is fine with my boys, but when you start adding greens, and nuts, and cheese (always with the cheese!), they both look at me a little sideways and shake their heads--politely, but I know what they are thinking.

So these two strawberry salads were eaten entirely by me. I'm proud to say it, I have been eating more than my share of greens and strawberries lately!

Strawberry arugula salad with baked brie
Serves 1 for a meal, two for a starter
4 cups arugula leaves (I added in a bit of baby spinach as well)
1 cup strawberries, sliced or halved, depending on size
Olive oil, drizzled
Salt and pepper to taste
Brie (three small slices, but that's really up to you...)

Clean and tear the arugula if the leaves are larger than bite-size. Place in a medium bowl. Drizzle the olive oil on the greens and toss lightly. Cut the strawberries and add to the greens, toss gently. Arrange greens and strawberry mixture on a plate.

Turn the broiler on high in your oven. Spray a cookie sheet with nonstick spray (or use parchment) and lay the brie slices on the tray. Broil for 3-4 minutes, depending on your oven and how far your rack is from the element. When the cheese is bubbling slightly, take it out and let the cheese rest for a minute. Gently slide a pancake turner under the cheese, and lift onto the greens.

Salt and pepper to taste, and enjoy!

I really enjoyed the salty-sweet combination with this salad. Quite heavenly.

Here's what I can't believe about this kale salad: That I haven't tried it sooner. The whole "massaged" kale thing has been around for quite some time, but honestly, until you've tried it, you'll just think it will be like eating grass. At least, that's what was rattling around in the back of my mind... But you've probably tried it many times, and I'm the one late to the party... any which way, wow, it's great! The dressing really works its magic, and before you know it, the greens are soft and tender, and the whole combination is quite delicious.

The recipe I found to base this (and the dressing recipe) from did not have any cheese in the combination... obviously I had to change that! I experimented with a bit of blue cheese on one part of the salad, and a little parmesan on the other. Both were quite yummy!

Kale salad with strawberries
Serves 1 for a meal or 2 for a starter
6 cups of kale (this will reduce by more than half when massaging commences)
1 cup strawberries, sliced
1/3 cup cheese--blue, parmesan, I think chevre would be delightful as well...
1/2 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

Clean and chop the kale, taking out the stems. (Even with our delicate garden-fresh kale, this makes a great difference in terms of the chewability, steamed or otherwise.) Place the kale in a large mixing bowl and add a couple of tablespoons of dressing and massage for a minute or two. The kale starts to soften pretty quickly, and you can tell by touch pretty easily that it's "done." (If in doubt, taste test!)

Add the sliced strawberries, cheese and nuts, and toss gently, with salt and pepper to taste. Place on a dinner plate (or two salad plates) and enjoy!

Dressing
1 shallot, minced fine
1/3 c. olive oil
1/3 c. balsamic vinegar (I used a meyer lemon balsamic that added some great extra zip)
1 Tbsp. honey
Salt and pepper

Chop the shallot finely, put in a small container. (I start out with the little jam jar that I plan to store the dressing in.) Add the rest of the ingredients, put the lid on the bottle and shake like crazy for a couple of minutes. Voila.

Do you have a favorite strawberry salad recipe to share? I am open and ready to receive any new ideas you would like to send my way. There are still oodles of berries in the fridge...

Friday night grateful moment

eeling very peaceful tonight, and especially grateful for a few things in particular...

A long weekend! A couple of extra days with husband! Nothing requiring our time and attention until Tuesday morning! A-mazing.

Conveniences of modern living that we so often take for granted. We were without power for a number of hours recently, and it really does bring to light (candle light, in this case!) how reliant we all are on little things like power and hot water and... well, those are the two that immediately spring to mind. I can live without a lot of things, but power and hot water? Those are favorites of mine.

 springroll

Spring, renewal... all that comes with it. Calves hopping about in the pasture. Flowering pea vines. Freshly mowed grass. Gently falling rain. (Or in our case, rain, hail, slush and then more rain the past 24 hours.) Sunshine (even through the rain, sometimes). The promise of morels. (Well, "promise" might be a little too strong, implying I know they are out there to be gleaned... how about wild and unsubstantiated optimism?)

 grilledwatermelon

Anticipation of summer. I'm pretty excited about fun stuff coming up, visits with family and friends, oodles of work to get done--at work and at home--and long days to get a lot accomplished. And, how many days until school's out? Oh, only 9. Wow.

 radish

Having a young man who wants to make a little coin over the summer. Indeed, something to be grateful for! The lists of things I will assign to said young man? They are a growin'.

Time with Seth this summer. It won't ALL be work and no play...

 arugulamango

A pup who loves to be loved. He just adores being with husband and I when we're home, and is a great traveler too. He is curled up by me right now, head on the rug, eyes looking up at me like the sweet beast that he is.

Great greens all over the place--from true greens (arugula, kale, lettuce) to great little zinnia starts, sunflowers poking out of the ground, dahlias starting to branch out... so many great things taking off in the yard!

 cabbage

Strawberries! I got a little present this week of some early, sweet and lovely strawberries. They were divine and I can't wait until our little strawberry patch has ripened too. I feel like I've been waiting all winter for berries. Oh, right, I have.

 strawberry

As you can see by my "salad feature" tonight, I have a hankering for summer eating. We had a mean potato salad today, and there are leftovers calling out from the fridge. If that's not summer eating...

I hope wherever you are at the start of this long weekend (in the US; you Canadians had a shot at relaxation last weekend, now it's our turn) you are ready for an extra does of family, friends and DIY. Memorial Day weekend is renowned for sunburns, sports injuries, overdoing it in the yard and the start of all kinds of home projects that will take all summer to complete! Enjoy!

Baked ricotta salad with pesto

ummer eating just keeps on rolling... the tomatoes are finally ON, daily, and the corn is minutes away from being truly harvestable (which didn't stop me from harvesting some today anyway!). The basil keeps churning out new and even bigger leaves, and I can't help but whiz up pesto with alarming frequency. Well, I'm not alarmed, but I'm pretty sure you would be if you saw the big dallops I put on just about everything but my granola. Ah well, tis the season, right?

Here's my current favorite salad, combining all these flavors and another new yum discovery: baked ricotta.

First with the ricotta:

Baked ricotta
1 small container part-skim ricotta
2 eggs
1/2 cup shredded parmesan
1/4 cup flour

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Either with a hand-held or stand mixed, beat ricotta very well, until fluffy. Add the eggs and cheese, beat again. Add the flour and mix well, until incorporate.

Spread the cheese mixture into a non-stick-sprayed 8x8 baking pan, and put into the hot oven. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the cheese sets up and is golden.

Remove from the oven and cool to room temperature.

Baked ricotta salad
Serves 6 as side dish
One recipe baked ricotta (see above), cubed to 1/2 inch squares
4 medium tomatoes, cubed
1 cup fresh pesto
2 cups fresh corn, cooked, cut off the cob (about 4 ears) (totally optional, I made it one day with, one day without... both were lovely)
Salt and pepper to taste

Toss all ingredients together in a medium mixing bowl. That's it. Enjoy!

Tips: If you prebake the ricotta and it's refrigerator cold, take it out in advance and bring it back to room temperature before making the salad. You can also microwave it briefly to bring some warmth back to the cheese. The flavor is much better when not ice cold.

I love steak + I love salad = many Perfect Bites of steak salad

teak salad has been a favorite of mine for a long time...really, from the first bite I had of one such salad, years ago. A couple of local restaurants have usually served good summer steak salads... until one of them stopped serving lunch and the other had a major chef-changeover, thus new menu, thus no more steak salad...

But that's OK, I can make one for myself! Having a variety of summer ingredients on hand, and steak as well, makes for a happy girl in this kitchen.

It's been a few years since I first saw tomatoes and nectarines and/or peaches together in a salad--not what I immediately said "oh yes" to, but it proved itself a surprising sweet-savory combination. Add to that a little grilled steak, some avocado and blue cheese, and this salad has all the makings of a Perfect Bite. (I am a big fan of meals that can bring about a Perfect Bite, as you can read here, here or here, if you have spare time on your hands...)

Steak salad with tomatoes and nectarines
1 4-6 oz. steak, grilled to your preference, cooled and sliced thinly
1 tomato, cut into eighth wedges
1 nectarine, sliced
1/2 avocado, peeled and cubed
2 cups mixed greens of your choice, washed and chopped
1/3 cup blue cheese crumbles
Balsamic vinaigrette

Arrange the salad greens on a dinner-size plate, and add the steak, tomatoes, nectarines and avocado in whatever order you'd like. Crumble the blue cheese over the top and drizzle with vinaigrette.

This one makes my day, whenever I get a chance to whip it up. I hope you enjoy as well.

Beet and chevre salad

ur garden is rolling out the produce quite nicely, and I'm a wee bit blissed out with the harvesting of romaine, kale, potatoes and beets. Green beans need to be gathered soon, as do onions (Walla Walla Sweets!), and the zucchini and summer squash are starting to proliferate... amazing what a little sunshine will do.

So those beets... how about those beets? I have had "issues" with beets over the years... not many issues--the main one is that I think they taste like dirt if they aren't of the pickled variety, and I really can't stand the pickled ones! Generally, I've just avoided them. For some reason, though, over the past few years, I've felt like it's something I need to "work on." Because there aren't enough vegetables in my cupboard? Not sure. A nutritional psychologist could probably posit a theory or two...

Sweet Aunty M tried to convert me a few years back with some beets roasted in vanilla, and they were... okay... nothing I felt the need to do again. And borscht is borscht--as a soup it seems quite separate from beets themselves; I know, the contradiction makes no sense. I understand your confusion. I'm a little confused myself.

And yet, here we are: there are beets in the garden. Someone bought seeds (me) (notice that they are yellow and striped beets, how fun!) and planted them (me again) and even thinned them out (yep), and picked them, brought them inside, washed, peeled and roasted them (yes, still me). Sounds like someone who actually likes beets, doesn't it?

Well, true confession time, I've been moving sideways toward liking beets for a bit now. A couple of local restaurants have featured beets as salads and appetizers and the way that beets have found their way into my heart will come as no surprise: chevre. Yep, it's another vehicle for cheese! I knew you'd understand.

So, when I thought of how I'd want to eat my beets, I looked around for a beet and chevre salad, and found a few options. I settled on this one to model after, and the results were truly yummy.

Beet and chevre salad
2 cups washed mixed greens (I had romaine from the yard, but think in the future arugula would be my green of choice for this salad)
1 cup roasted beets, sliced or cubed
1/3 cup chevre, crumbled
1/3 cup roasted hazelnuts, chopped roughly

Orange vinaigrette
1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Combine orange juice and oil in a jar with lid, add salt and pepper and shake until emulsified.

Put greens in a medium bowl and drizzle with enough orange dressing to coat and toss well. Layer the greens, then beets, then chevre, then hazelnuts on a dinner-size plate and drizzle a bit more dressing if you'd like.

Beet heaven! Two words I never thought I'd put in the same sentence.

How's this for a clever idea for roasting the beets and not having any colors run into each other? Those dark beets can really stain up whatever they touch! It worked so cleverly I had to post this picture to Pinterest (of course!).

Modified chopped Cobb salad

ome days I just crave a big salad with lots of meat. And I don't mean "meat" in the animal sense, although I'm certainly not opposed to a little chicken, or a steak salad... But most of the time, I'm wanting more than just a few greens with dressing. What I'm looking for is to fill up on a big bowl of my favorite ingredients, and right now those ingredients scream SPRING! (I should say, SUMMER!, since the warmth finally arrived in all it's glory!)

Recently, my salad bowl ended up with the following:

Modified chopped Cobb salad
Serves 2 (or if you're me and you've been working in the yard all morning, just me)
1.5 cups asparagus, roasted and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1 avocado, peeled and diced
2 hard boiled eggs, chopped into eighths
4 baguette slices, toasted and cut into quarters (to act as croutons, and they worked quite nicely)
1 spring onion, chopped finely
1/4 cup blue cheese
Dressing of your choice: I like a light olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette, but blue cheese or ranch would also be yummy...

I tossed all these ingredients in a large bowl and let sit for a (precious) few minutes to let the dressing soak into the baguette.

Enjoy!

If, like me, upon typing "Cobb," you wonder where that name actually came from, and should it always be capitalized...  check this out. Good to know.