After working in the garden on Tuesday night, Benzo and I decided to keep enjoying the sunny evening by grilling our dinner outside on the deck. We had some salmon burgers and some ears of corn from last summer in the freezer. Onto the grill they went!
I used my salmon burger to make the best salmon salad I’ve had in a long time. It was so delicious. I gobbled up the entire thing.
I started with a bed of mixed organic greens. Then on top I added dried cranberries, the chopped up salmon burger and some sliced avocado. We were out of bottled salad dressing so it was a great excuse to make a homemade version. I flipped open my main cookbook resource Betty Crocker 
The toasted walnut dressing was so easy. I whipped it together in about 10 minutes in the Magic Bullet. And it only took that long because I had to toast the walnuts. The ingredients were really simple and all things I keep on hand like olive oil, walnuts, lemon juice, salt and garlic. I really liked that the dressing was creamy, yet did not include any dairy!
You can find a similar recipe on Betty Crocker’s website here. The only difference is that I used 1/3 cup of toasted walnuts instead of 2/3 cup. But I’ll have to try it with 2/3 cup next time. In my mind you can go wrong with more walnuts!
And I can’t end this post without mentioning the corn. Last summer our corn did not grow very well. We got maybe 2-4 decent ears. So one weekend at the farmers’ market we bought 14 ears of corn for like 6 or 7 dollars, came home shucked and blanched them all and put them in the freezer. And then enjoyed (almost) farm fresh corn all winter. It’s the best!
If you have the freezer space I seriously recommend stocking up on fresh veggies from the farmers’ market this year. It’s a great way to eat local all year round, even in the winter when produce is scarce. And you just can’t beat corn like that. When we pull it from the freezer to grill, it doesn’t need any butter, salt or anything on it. It tastes like perfection when it’s naked!
So back to the salad. What’s your favorite homemade salad dressing? I personally love balsamic vinaigrette the most so I need to find a good homemade recipe for that.
Everything Is Homemade 
Can you do a post on how to freeze most vegetables….not just corn. By blanching them approx how long did you have them in the water? Sorry if they sound like ‘stupid’ questions but I have frozen other vegetables and they always come out wrong. Other than corn which I actually cooked and then cut away from the cob and bagged. Thank you for your help
Hi eileen – sure I will definitely do posts on freezing veggies. But I probably won’t do them until later in the summer when I have a lot of stuff coming out of the garden. If you want to read up on it now, pickyourown.org has a lot of great information. That’s where I go to find out the appropriate times for blanching veggies before freezing.
On the right hand side of the site under “Related Topics” click on “Home canning, freezing, jam, preserving, etc. directions.”
My favorite salad dressing is out of one of my 1940’s cookbooks – homemade French dressing. If you substitute lemon juice for the cider vinegar, it’s really good, too. 🙂
French Dressing
2/3 cup salad oil
1/3 cup cider vinegar
4 teaspoons sugar, or to taste
1/16 teaspoon dried mustard
1/16 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon onion juice
Combine all ingredients by beating thoroughly with rotary beater. Beat or shake well just before serving. About 1 cup.
That sounds really good and easy and the best part is that I already have everything to make it at home!