Black Olive & Cilantro Dressing on Egg & Avocado Salad

We eat a lot of salad, especially in the summer when I just want to eat lighter meals in the heat. Even though kids are heading back to school and talk of Fall fills the air, the heat will not leave our area for a couple more months. So salads are still on the menu. The best way to keep salads from becoming boring are to change up the dressing. Really salad dressing is the star of any good salad, at the very least an award winning best supporting actor. Making salad dressing is far easier than spending what feels like f-o-r-e-v-e-r reading ingredient labels on the multitudes of commercial dressings (why am I reading the labels? to avoid soy, rancid vegetable oils, hydrogenated oils, added sugars, GMOs, food coloring, chemicals I can't pronounce, preservatives and who knows what else).

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Pepperoni & Mozzarella Topped Eggplant

My kids insisted that this was not pizza, and I have to agree, even if the topping is pretty much a pizza topping. This is fork food, not finger food, and not a pizza substitute. However it is a simple (enough) way to get some eggplant into our diets. Eggplant is beautiful and I often pick some up when it is available only to have it sit around and stare at me. Challenging me to use it before it goes bad.

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