With record-breaking heat and summer still weeks away, our meals are all about cold soups, cool, crisp salads, and chilled wrap sandwiches. The salad we enjoyed today is from one of my favorite cookbooks (often mentioned here), St. Louis Days St. Louis Nights, a production of the St. Louis Junior League decades ago. I happen to love Junior League cookbooks and this one gets plenty of use. List maker and annotator that I am, you can see the notes I've made over the years in the margins of the page featuring the recipe (below).
Even though this is what used to be referred to as a "Ladies Salad" back in the seventies in the days of bridge luncheons and ladies' clubs, I find the men like it as much as the women. The fruit gives it a bit of sweetness, but not overly so, the tangy dressing really hits the spot. I have found that a variety of fruits can work well in this mixture, and adding some crumbled cheese (in today's case, feta, in previous cases, bleu) makes it a bit more "manly" and therefore pleasing to the men in your life. Eaten alone it makes a light, but pleasing lunch, pair it with a cold soup or club sandwich and you have the perfect summer dinner.
