Classic Three Bean Salad

Three bean salad is a classic picnic and cookout side dish. It's cool, refreshing, and a nice mayo-free option for your next summer gathering.

Creamy poppy seed dressing

A cool and creamy salad dressing with poppy seeds that goes perfectly with big spring and summer time salads. 

Thai basil cucumber salad

A refreshing summer salad fill of crispy cucumbers, fresh Thai basil, and a simple rice vinegar dressing, and topped with crunchy roasted peanuts.

How to make Greek dressing

Homemade Greek house dressing is a perfect salad dressing for summer vegetables. It's easy to make and adds delicious flavor to your salads, chicken, and more. 

Creamy carrot, raisin, and pineapple salad

A creamy carrot salad with plump raisins and juicy pineapple makes for a delicious and refreshing picnic or cookout side dish that's sure to be a family favorite.

25 Savory Apple Recipes to Try this Fall

Apples are a terrific addition to many savory meals and recipes. They pair perfectly with cheese, chicken, pork, vegetables, bread, and many warm spices. 

Kohlrabi and radish slaw

A crisp and refreshing slaw made with kohlrabi, radishes, carrots, and a sweet poppy seed dressing. This slaw is a delicious summer side dish and perfect with cookouts and picnics.

Broccoli stem slaw with cranberries

Save your fresh broccoli stems and use them to make an easy and delicious slaw! This slaw has a simple dressing and chewy dried cranberries along with salted roasted sunflower seeds for extra flavor and texture.

Creamy beet and apple salad

Disclosure: This post is sponsored on behalf of #appleweek. Our generous sponsors, Swiss Diamond, Envy Apples, Imperial Sugar, Nordic Ware, Rodelle Vanilla, Flahavan's Irish Oatmeal, Nairn's and The Spice House have provided us with products for recipe creation and a giveaway for our readers. As always, all opinions are my own.

 

A creamy and tangy dressing coats these crisp, sweet apples and soft, earthy beets for a delicious fall side dish. 

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#AppleWeek is still going strong and I hope you have been enjoying everyone's amazing recipe contributions this week! I know I am! Hopefully you have found at least a couple, if not several, new apple recipes to try out this fall. Today I have a fall side dish that is super easy and also so tasty. I have to say that even my toddlers scarfed down this salad - it's that good. 

I received some spices from The Spice House for #AppleWeek and one that I was especially excited to try was ground caraway. I've used the whole seeds several times, but never a ground version. I have been wanting to make a beet and apple salad ever since I tried one years ago and I thought caraway would be a lovely compliment to the flavors. I was correct - the flavors in this salad all go together so nicely and the contrast between the sweet crispy apples, the soft earthy beets, and the cool and tangy dressing go so well together. 

We had this salad along with come cranberry chicken sausage and potato pierogi for a perfect autumn meal. This recipe will serve about 4 people as a side dish.

Dill pickle potato salad

Creamy potato salad filled with dill - dill pickle juice, chunks of dill pickles, and dried dill - is perfect for the dill pickle lovers in your life!

Easy creamy grape salad

Make this cool and creamy grape salad side dish for your next summer cookout or picnic! It's so refreshing and always a big hit with everyone who tries it.  

Picnic macaroni salad

This picnic macaroni salad is a perfect classic cookout dish to bring to a summer party or family barbecue. It's full of flavorful and color and is easy to put together.

Green bean and red potato salad

Summer green beans and baby red potatoes come together in this light and delicious salad. It's perfect for a cookout, picnic, or summer dinner side dish. 

Hot German potato salad

We celebrated Oktoberfest a little late this year, but that's OK because we still got it in before October faded away. 

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As part of our dinner we had delicious sausages from Spar's European Sausage and Meats, German sweet and sour red cabbage, and this Hot German potato salad along with some German beers. All in all, a very tasty meal! I can't believe that October is almost over. October and November are my favorite months of the year and I'm trying to make sure I enjoy them fully (before the craziness of December takes over everything).

This potato salad recipe is just slightly adapted from The German Cookbook. Since receiving this book for Christmas last year, I have really come to love it and the process of learning more German recipes. If you are at all interested in German cooking, I highly recommend it! 

When my husband tasted this potato salad he said it reminded him of what his grandparents would serve when he was a kid. I previously posted the cold version which we also enjoy. This recipe will make enough to feed about four people as a side dish.

Broccoli salad with cheddar, cranberries, and sunflower seeds

Broccoli salad is a summer picnic favorite. I especially love one full of crunch and flavors like this broccoli salad with cheddar, cranberries, and sunflower seeds.

Cold German potato salad

I remember eating German potato salad at family and other picnics as a kid and not being a big fan. I'm pretty sure that most of it came from a can and I remember it being very sour tasting. 

 

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There's a hot and a cold potato salad recipe in The German Cookbook that I've been waiting to try. This is the cold version and it's reminiscent of the potato salad I remember, but better. I am a big fan of potatoes and vinegar together, so I was fairly confident that I'd enjoy the homemade version and I was correct. 

 

The salad would be perfect for all the upcoming summer picnics because it lacks dairy and gets better the longer the potatoes soak in the vinegar and other flavors. This recipe will serve about four people as a side dish, but you can easily double or triple it for a larger crowd. 

 

Hopefully you can find some good sweet German mustard in your grocery store or specialty foods shop. We buy it at Spar's European Sausage Shop (which, by the way, is an excellent place to pick up something to go with this salad).

Warm mushroom, chestnut, and bacon salad

Bacon, mushrooms, and chestnuts go together so well. This salad recipe came from Ripe by Nigel Slater (one of my new cookbooks). 

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This cookbook is really lovely and is full of beautiful photographs and delicious looking recipes featuring fruit. I guess I never really consider things like chestnuts to be fruit, but they are, and there's a whole chestnut section in the book.  

I bought up a bunch of chestnuts while they were available, so I was immediately drawn to this section of the book. The recipe recommends frisee or baby spinach as the greens, but I had radicchio in the fridge and thought it would also be good in this salad and provide another color. 

The warm mixture on top of the greens provides a nice contrast. I also added some red wine vinegar because I thought it was needed to cut through the fat and boost the dressing flavor.

My husband and I ate this as a light dinner with some bread and cheese. I think that if we weren't already having some cheese in our meal, some crumbled gorgonzola or goat cheese would have made an excellent addition to this salad.  

Below is my slightly modified version of this recipe for two. Serve this as a side dish or as a light lunch or dinner with soup and/or bread.

Warm Mexican corn salad

Mexican corn on the cob, or Elote, is something I've never had, but have always wanted. I have seen a lot of recipes for it and they talk about how you can get it on the streets of Mexico from vendors.

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Since I've never been to Mexico, I have not yet had the opportunity to enjoy this delicious sounding treat. But, I did decide that it would make a great side dish to our steak tacos with pico de gallo. I read a lot of recipes for Elote and then I decided to change it up and use the same flavor profile to make a warm salad. I had bought some fresh corn recently and had just gotten a garden fresh jalapeno.  

While Elote is made with all mayo, I opted to cut the mayo and use mostly sour cream as well as add some scallions and jalapeno for more veggies and flavor.

One bite of this and my husband and I were both hooked! It was the perfect combination of sweet, salty, spicy, and sour. The two of us polished off the bowl quite easily, even opting for seconds of the corn instead of another steak taco, which says a lot! 

This recipe will make a side dish for about three people and is super easy to adjust for more. Definitely give this dish a try before sweet corn season is behind us.

Larb (Lao beef salad)

I've never been to Laos and I never had Larb until I made this dish. When I saw this recipe amongst others I knew that a plate of Larb was in our future. 

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I love Thai food, and pretty much all Asian food that I've tried, so I knew I would enjoy the flavors of this Lao dish. From my brief research, it seems like this is the national dish of Laos and each region has variations on the herbs and accompaniments. 

 

Beef is the traditional meat, but you could also make this with ground turkey, chicken, or even pork if you prefer. 

I liked this meal because it was fun to eat. I served it with a side of Jasmine rice, sliced cucumbers, lettuce leaves, lime wedges, and chili-garlic sauce. 

 

You can either eat it on the rice with the vegetables alongside, or you can wrap everything in a lettuce leaf. Other vegetables can be served as well such as green beans or bean sprouts. 

 

My adapted recipe is below. This recipe will serve about three people, but feel free to double or triple for your next dinner party. Guests will like this fun and unique dish. 

Roasted strawberry balsamic vinaigrette

I had some farm fresh strawberries left that were quickly getting soft on me. Originally, I was going to use them in this salad for a light dinner one evening. But since they were getting soft, I decided to turn the strawberries into the dressing. And it was a good idea! 

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The strawberries were very sweet and I decided to roast them until they become very soft and juicy. I added some balsamic vinegar, grainy mustard, and a bit of strawberry jam for extra sweetness. I used it to top a salad full of baby spinach and greens, red onion, toasted almonds, crispy bacon, and feta. It was such a fresh and delicious dressing and salad with a perfect combination of flavors. 

We try to eat a salad dinner at least once a week in the summer, especially on the evenings when I have my boot camp class. Have a mentioned this class before? Boot camps seem to be becoming all the rage recently. I've been taking one for about 8 weeks now and I absolutely love it. It's been a great way to get me to do more cardio exercise. Plus, the class is at a school right down the road from me so I can walk to and from class - a definite bonus. But after I get home, I don't want a heavy dinner to eat after working out, plus it's later than we would usually eat dinner. This recipe will make about 2 cups of dressing.