Summer Heat = Cool Salads

Two weekends ago it was 48 degrees outside. It gets pretty hot over here. When you go outside in heat like that and the wind blows it's like a blow dryer on your skin. There is not much in the way of escape besides air conditioning (which we don’t have) and the pool (not much use after 9:00 pm).

One thing that becomes quite popular in the sweltering Andalucian summers are salads. It's too hot to cook and you're not that hungry anyway so enter salads. There are different types of course, but I can tell you that Spaniards certainly come up with interesting and colourful ways to present raw vegetables for consumption.

Over the next 6 stifling weeks, I will be showcasing some of my favourite salads that I make regularly along with the recipes. Enjoy!!

First on the list:

Ensalada Mixta

We'll start simple. Probably the most common salad you'll see in Spain is an ensalada mixta or mixed salad. Everyone has their own version of how they prepare this salad, but some ingredients you always see.

1/2 head of iceberg lettuce
2 sliced tomatoes
1/2 jar of shredded, preserved* carrots
1/2 jar of shredded, preserved* beets
1 can of sweet corn
1 small can of tuna

I also add:
1/4 of a small onion - thinly sliced
sometimes I will replace the carrots with apio (shredded, preserved* radish)

It's a typical house salad I know, but very popular in any restaurant and common in any Spanish home.

For dressing I simply put a little olive oil and even less vinegar over the salad with some salt and pepper to taste.

YA ESTA!

*Preserved in vinegar. Fairly easy to find in Spain, but maybe not so easy to find in Canada. You may have to make your own.

Harsh!

One thing that I noticed from the start when we moved to Spain is just how harsh life is. It wasn't so much from the struggles that we've gone from although those were pretty harsh, but more from just life around us.

The reality of what sort of part animals play in the everday lives of humans here in Spain is quite obvious. Watch a bull fight to see that. I still haven't gone. I don't really need to.

Last night was a perfect example of the harshness of life; and death for that matter when I was driving on the highway to go an pick up a friend to go out for drinks and passed a dog who had obviously been hit. What I didn't expect was for the dog to look back up at me as I was driving by. By the time I had realized that he was still alive I had already passed him. This was a highway of 80 km/h.

For some reason I went and picked up my friend first and told her what had happened and then proceeded to go back to see what we could do for the poor guy. It was a good thing I picked her up first because while I tried to get to him, she called the vet.

A couple of other good people stopped just as I was getting to him and they hauled him over the medium off of the highway and out of harms way. This was no small feat as he was obviously in pain. One of the people who stopped happened to be a vet and while she was waiting for her husband to bring the van back around off the highway I kept thinking if he survived this and was okay, Miguel and I would take him and call him "Lucky". He was not well though.

I called the vet several hours later to find that they ended up having to put Lucky to sleep as his back was severely broken and he was paralyzed.

This is life. It happens. Unfotunately to dogs and cats far too often in Southern Spain. There are a lot of strays. I feel better now though knowing that Lucky is no longer in pain than having the nightmare in my head that some poor dog is dying slowly on the road.

I wonder how many people drove by in the time I passed Lucky to the time I came back with my friend. Harsh!