Sometimes all you need for lunch is a big plate of vegetables doused in good fat sitting alongside a tall glass of raw milk. And sometimes it’s just what I need in the heat of the summer when I try to make breakfast the heaviest meal of the day, getting all of my cooking in before my kitchen and I hit the melting point.
But who needs to argue for a vegetable salad at a time of year when there’s all the zucchini, cucumbers, green beans, and peppers you can eat. I combine a few of these, cut into noodle shapes, with our homegrown garlic and sunflower seeds for extra crunch and protein.
Dressed simply with olive oil and vinegar and with just a pinch of turmeric to color it a beautiful golden hue, this salad will be gracing our table again and again as we beat the heat and try to stay ahead of the garden produce.
Mid-Summer Vegetable Noodle Salad
Recipe Note: Feel free to exchange some of the squash or cucumber for bell pepper strips.
The Players
- 3 medium summer squash of any variety
- 1 large cucumber, peeled if desired
- 3 cups green beans, trimmed and snapped into bite-sized pieces
- 4 garlic cloves, minced
- 4 Tablespoons olive oil (where to buy olive oil)
- 2 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar (where to buy raw apple cider vinegar)
- 1/2 jalapeno, seeded and diced or 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1 teaspoon turmeric
- 1 cup sunflower seeds (where to buy organic, raw sunflower seeds)
- sea salt to taste
The How-To
- Steam green beans until tender. Set aside to cool.
- Cut squash into noodles using either a spiral slicer (I use this one), a julienne peeler (this is mine), or by slicing long thin strips from the vegetables with your knife. Repeat using cucumber. If the cucumber doesn’t slice well due to the high water content, simply cut it into bite-sized pieces.
- Add sliced vegetables to medium-sized bowl and sprinkle with just a little bit of salt. Let stand 5-10 minutes. Squeeze as much excess moisture as you can out of vegetable noodles.
- Mix in green beans, garlic, olive oil, vinegar, red pepper flakes, turmeric, and sunflower seeds. Season gently with salt and mix well to combine.
- Taste and adjust salt and vinegar as desired. Serve as a main dish lunch salad alongside with some raw milk or cheese, or as a vegetable addition to a summer cook out spread.
For more delicious recipes similar to this one (grain-free and dairy-free), I highly recommend the Paleo Eats Cookbook.
Written by a Cordon Bleu trained chef, this book is packed with hundreds of recipes to get you started on your journey to ancestral eating. Recipes are grain-free, dairy-free, soy-free, sugar-free, and use healthy fats. They’re also super easy to follow and can be prepared in 30 minutes or less!
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Thank you for the recipe. It sounds delicious and well suited to our current heat wave in the east. Also, it will help me keep up with my CSA veggies. I tried your recent potato salad recipe, and we were very happy with it. I’ll definitely be making that again.
Lora – You’re welcome! And now I’m wishing we weren’t saving the rest of our potato harvest for seed now that you mentioned the potato salad. 🙂
This sounds so totally phenomenal. I make zucchini pasta all the time, but I love the idea of using cucumber. Have you ever used carrots? They also make yummy noodles.
I bet carrots would make it beautiful. Such color!
Just when I was wondering what to do with my fresh beans, zucchini and cucumber! Course, I’ve got a lot of tomatoes, so I’ll throw one in too! I hope you will check out http://www.latebloomershow.com/. Thanks!
Need the # of servings and nutrition info, please.
Nika, This recipe served 4 as a light lunch in addition to something with protein and fat, like milk or yogurt. It can also be passed as a salad for 4-6.
i just polished this salad off and it is crazy delicious! the flavors in the dressing are just amazing. i’m interested to see how the rest of it tastes tomorrow, after the flavors rest together over nite. as an aside, i recently made a quart of fermented garlic and this is the first time i’ve eaten from it. so delicious!
Would be helpful to know how many servings there are….? 4? 6?