What to eat Wednesdays - Chunky salad with herby dressing

I mentioned last week that I've decided to eat a salad for lunch each day to try and get more fresh vegetables into my diet. This has been going well, and really taken the stress out of deciding what to have for lunch each day.

Today I thought I would share with you my 'go-to' salad recipe, which I've been mixing up with a yummy dressing I found over at Frugal Granola.

I first tried this dressing last week, using fresh parsley but only dried tarragon. I enjoyed it but could taste that dried herb taste, so decided to plant tarragon in my garden specifically to be used for this dressing. I've never grown tarragon before so it will be interesting to see what other uses I find for it.

I find the fresh tarragon gives this salad a lovely freshness, almost like a palate cleanser.

Salad ingredients (serves one)

• 1/2 apple, cubed
• 4 thick slices cucumber, cut into pie shapes
• 1 carrot, peeled and diced, sliced or julienned
• handful of cherry tomatoes (not yet, but once they're in season)
• 1T sunflower seeds
• 1T sesame seeds
• protein of some sort, eg. shredded cold cooked chicken, or crumbled feta cheese, or angle-sliced steak, or tinned lemon-pepper tuna, etc

Method
1. Mix ingredients together in a bowl and drizzle over a measure (to taste) of herby salad dressing (see below) when ready to serve.

Herby salad dressing ingredients (serves four)

• 1/3c extra virgin olive oil
• 1t red wine vinegar
• 1t Dijon mustard
• 1T lemon juice (I used some of the frozen lemon juice I had set aside during winter)
• 1T sugar (unrefined dried sugar cane juice is best)
• 1 clove minced garlic
• 1/2T fresh tarragon (or 1/2t dried)
• 1/2T fresh parsley (or 1/2t dried)
• Sea salt and grinds of black pepper

Method
1. Shake ingredients together in a small jar.

2. Drizzle required amount over salad.

Dressing will last several days in the fridge.