Colorful Greek Chicken Salad Plate

Greek yogurt seasoned with herbs, vegetables, chicken and cheese served alongside a colorful bed of vegetables, hummus, and pita chips for a simple summer salad plate

Eating my colors makes me happy. Combining tasty food with colorful piles of vegetables is a terrific way to eat a variety of colors. I wouldn't normally say that chicken salad is a colorful dish, but when you serve it with gorgeous vegetables, well, even on a white plate this would still be a riot of color.

I've been throwing together some easy summer mixed plates using a variety of cool and warm ingredients lately.  For a glimpse, head to my FB page to check out this photo.

Surimi Chirashi Sushi with Summer Vegetables

A filling main dish salad of surimi and summer vegetables tossed with sushi-seasoned rice

When it's hot out, my body craves lighter food. Eating seasonally, the kitchen pendulum swings [yeah, there's a pendulum swinging in my kitchen. that's why it's a mess all the time!] from hearty chili, stew, or casseroles over to simply seasoned piles of pretty vegetables.  Making a chirashi sushi is one way to keep it cool in the hot weather. Chirashi sushi means scattered sushi, which means I get to be lazy all the flavors without all the fuss of rolling your own.

I love to roll my own sushi, don't get me wrong. The other day I made a bunch of pretty, and tasty, Egg, Kohlrabi and Carrot rolls. Taking a page from Fusian we put panko over top and the flavor/texture contrast was really neat.

When I've got kohlrabi or cucumber I will make up a big bowl of chirashi sushi. If I've got salmon I'll add that, or Spam, Surimi, or just scrambled eggs rolled up in an omelette. My friend Lasar introduced me not only to chirashi sushi but also to the furikake my son and I sprinkle on top. [My spouse and daughter don't care for furikake, so I list it as optional below.]

This keeps for a couple of days and can be reheated gently in the microwave. I store the cucumbers/kohlrabi separate because I like them cool and crunchy.

Pepperoni and Yellow Squash Pizza

Overlapping slices of summer squash and pepperoni atop an herbed goat cheese base crust

I have to say it is AWESOME when I've previously scheduled a post to go up and lo and behold, when I pick up my farm share, the featured vegetable for the post is in the box! This week we got a transitional box between Spring and summer produce, with zucchini, yellow squash, turnips, kale, green beans (perfect timing on the Hot French Potato Salad, too) parsley (some went into this pasta and the rest vanished into a food processor full of garlic scape pesto) and carrots.  Probably radishes too--oh and chard as well--our farmers really rock at filling up the boxes each week.  I made Zucchini Carrot Es-kah-pay (it's a Finding Nemo reference and a bastardization of something in a Giada de Laurentis cookbook-stay tuned) dish that we'll eat in an antipasto platter over the weekend, and if it's good you'll find it here.  Eventually. The rest of the carrots and the radishes will be used to scoop up a green garlic hummus I made out of green garbanzo beans and green garlic--so now that I've dealt with the scapes and the green garlic I'm ready to roast and put up the rest of the garlic harvest. But the turnips are looming over my head . . . last weekend I did a simmered & grilled side dish of cubed turnips, potatoes, kohlrabi and radishes that became a very tasty enchilada filling, so I may want to try that with all turnips.  But enough about my stream-of-consciousness for today--on to the real post.

Some of my best meals occur by opening the fridge and seeing what needs to be used up. A bit of cheese and some pretty vegetables can turn into something surprising. I made this pizza sort of on a whim. Often I obsess over and plot out ingredients combinations . . . which I admit seems really weird . . . but this one was purely a 'it's Friday, what's in the fridge' type of pizza.

With all the ways I can shred, cube, or pulverize summer squash and incorporate it in other dishes, I never think to just celebrate the perfection and beauty of a thin circular slice. I see folks making lovely vegetable terrines and tians--and I loved the movie Ratatouille's signature dish presentation--but I never think that I could create such visually stunning food.

I admit I'm pleasantly surprised how well this pizza was received by the kids, and how well the photos turned out, though I have no clue why the crust got so fat--perhaps it was having fun rising in the kitchen while I was slicing away.  I've got a mind to try similar pizzas this summer. I have a desire to try my hand at making herbed cream cheese and herbed goat cheese since my herb garden [except cilantro, which bolted about 10 days after I planted it] is growing gangbusters.