Farm Life Fridays: Keep Cool with Summer Salads

This week has been incredibly hot. I know that when it's a scorcher out like this, I sure don't want to be cooking a hot meal and heating up my house even more! That's why when we look to beat the heat, we turn to the salad.

Forsythe Family Farms 2009 inc. has everything you need for a wonderful garden salad, freshly picked from their own fields.

The basis for any green salad is usually lettuce. The farm here currently has Romaine lettuce, kale, and some red leaf available. I went out to the back fields with Brandon earlier this week as he was harvesting Romaine. I love being able to witness firsthand the freshness of the produce: harvested from the field, given a wash, and taken right into the market!

This week I also learned that green peppers are really yellow or red peppers, but they just have not reached maturity yet. I always thought they were completely different varieties. As they fully ripen, they change colour. Green peppers are less sweet and slightly more bitter than yellow or orange peppers, with red bell peppers being the sweetest. We can look forward to some Forsythe red peppers coming this September.

This rainbow of produce is all grown right here on Forsythe Family Farms 2009 Inc.

Stop in to the Farm Market for all the salad fixings you could want for a colourful, cool, healthy salad! They've got more than just vegetables available, too. Salad dressing is currently on special in the market.

Of course, there are more uses for dressing than just for salads such as marinades for meat dishes. I came across this easy recipe (below) from cooks.com for chicken made with French dressing. It works, too, as a tasty slow cooker meal. If it looks like something you want to try out, don't forget: Forsythe Family Farms 2009 Inc. has their own naturally-raised chicken available for purchase.

Also, if you want to try something a little fancy with your salad, here are 30 Summer Salads from Ricardo Cuisine.