Summer Drink and Salad Duo

Summer is the perfect time to enjoy the combination of a cool refreshing drink and a light summer salad. Here are our picks for the month of August that are sure to please your taste buds. 

Santorini Shrimp Salad

Shrimp salad

Ingredients

Dressing

  • 1/4 cup  red wine vinegar
  • 3 tablespoons  chopped fresh parsley
  • 2 tablespoons  honey mustard
  • 1/4 teaspoon  salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon  black pepper
  • 1/4 teaspoon  red pepper flakes
  • 1/3 cup  olive oil
Salad

  • 1 pound  green beans, trimmed
  • 1 1/4 pounds  cleaned shrimp
  • 1 cup  cherry tomatoes, halved
  • 1/2 cup  (2 oz) feta cheese cubes or crumbles
  • 1 5 ounce bag arugula
  • 1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
  • 1/4 teaspoon  salt

Directions

Dressing

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together vinegar, parsley, mustard, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. While whisking, add oil in a thin stream. Set aside.

Salad

2. Bring a saucepan of water to a boil. Add beans; cook for 3 to 4 minutes. Drain and rinse with cool water.

3. Place shrimp in a resealable plastic bag or glass dish. Add 1/4 cup of the dressing and toss to combine. Marinate at least 10 minutes while heating grill or broiler. Thread shrimp onto skewers or place on broiler pan. Grill or broil for 5 minutes, turning, until cooked through.

4. In a medium bowl, toss green beans, tomatoes and feta cheese with 1 tbsp of the remaining dressing. Place arugula and red onion on a serving platter or in a large bowl. Top with shrimp and season with salt. Drizzle with 2 tbsp of the dressing and add green bean mixture. Serve remaining dressing on the side, if desired.

Note: Store-Bought Swap:

  • Opt for bottled light red wine vinaigrette or light Greek dressing and add a pinch of cayenne.

Watermelon Quencher

This juicy, fresh-as-summer cocktail will put smiles on everyone’s faces. Serve it as is to party guests. For kids and designated drivers, the watermelon juice, with or without a squeeze of lemon, is great straight up or mixed with seltzer.

watermelon

Ingredients

*For Two Drinks
  • 2 ounces fresh watermelon juice*
  • 1 ounce vodka
  • ½ ounce triple sec
  • ½ ounce fresh lemon juice
*To help you with portions: We bought a watermelon wedge that weighed about 2 1/2 pounds. That yielded about 4 cups of chunks. Puree those in the food processor (if you’re not using a seedless melon, please remove the seeds first!), strain the mixture through a fine sieve, and you get about 1 1/2 cups of juice—enough for six cocktails.

Directions

  1. Combine ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake 10 to 15 times to chill. Pour, with ice, into a glass rimmed with a mixture of half sugar, half salt.

Extra credit: Tint the sugar-salt mix with a couple of drops of red food coloring.

Sources: purcellsisters.com, familycircle.com

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

All materials taken from the Internet, unless otherwise noted, are assumed to be in the public domain. In the event that there is still a problem or error with copyrighted material, the break of the copyright is unintentional and noncommercial and the material will be removed immediately upon presented proof. Blog at WordPress.com.