Garden Club Picnic Salad

I could not remember if I was assigned a salad or a side dish for our annual Garden Club Picnic tonight so I made a vegetable salad that could be consider either.

I had bought a beautiful pound of green beans at the farmers market on Saturday so I just added some other veggies to those.

I made a lemon thyme dressing with our new Vitamix since I feel compelled to use it as often as possible to help amortize the cost of the crazy machine. If you don’t have a Vitamix you can make the dressing in a jar. You will just need to zest the lemon and squeeze the juice out to make it by hand.

Lemon Dressing

2 whole lemons – quartered

¼ c. olive oil

2 T. Champagne Vinegar

4 packets of Splenda

Handful of washed fresh Thyme

Salt and pepper

2 T. water

Put the lemons in the blender and on the lowest setting start chopping them up. Add the oil and water and increase the speed one notch every 10 seconds for three notches. Add the thyme, vinegar, Splenda, a pinch of salt and three turns of the pepper grinder. Run the blender for 30 more seconds.

Put a fine sieve strainer over a bowl and pour the contents of the blender in it. Using the back of a spoon push as much as you can through the sieve. You will have a lot of solids left in the sieve, which you will throw away. Taste the dressing in the bowl and add more salt and pepper if needed. Set the dressing aside.

Salad

1 Pound of green beans – cut in thirds

1 pound of cooked lentils – Traders Joes has them in the vegetable fridge

½ pounds of cooked and shelled edamame

10 small cooked beets diced

½ pound goat cheese

½ c. walnuts

Cook the green beans in pot of salted water for about four minutes and then drain them and run under cold water to stop the cooking. Chill the beans.

Add the lentils, beets and edamame to the chilled green beans and toss with the dressing. After everything is well-coated toss in the crumbled goat cheese and walnuts right before serving.