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Food for Thought Friday: 5 ingredients, 5 minutes - a favorite summer salad
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Hi there friend,
I’m keeping today’s monthly recipe share super simple, especially since I’ve been writing long emails lately.
It’s summer(!), so I’m eating more salads than usual - often 2-a-day! And summer fruit is in full swing in California! I don’t keep a ton of cheese around (you can read why here) - but there is one cheese that I crave above all others, and that is feta. After buying some feta this week, I remembered one of my FAVORITE salads to make with feta cheese. It’s SO simple and it’s SO GOOD. I wouldn't even call this a recipe - it’s more just a salad combo that I love - but I’ll write it like a recipe for ya today:
Green salad with lemon, berries, and feta cheese
Ingredients:
- arugula (regular greens or spinach work too but arugula is my favorite here)
- feta cheese
- blueberries, or other berries/combo of your choice
- lemon juice from 1-2 lemons, depending how many servings
- olive oil, salt and pepper
Instructions:
Make a salad out of these ingredients, adjusting the quantities depending on how many you’re serving. Ideally at least every other bite would have some feta and blueberry in it! For a large salad for one person, I use at least a half a lemon, sometimes a whole one because I like it lemony! Remember that feta is salty so you may not need salt; salt and pepper to taste, and taste and adjust the lemon + olive oil until just right.
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If you use arugula - this salad is a perfect balance of flavors: salty (feta), sweet (berries), bitter (arugula), sour (lemon). It hits every note! I’ve already eaten it twice this week, but writing about it makes me want to go make another one right now!
A note on feta: I recommend buying it in brine (ie, salt water) if you can. Second best would be a vacuum-packed chunk. Worst choice is crumbles - they are dry and way less flavorful, sometimes with preservatives added I think (yuck). Brine keeps the cheese lasting longer, and it also tastes better stored this way. Also the brined options are usually higher quality. If you have access to a Middle Eastern grocery store or market - definitely get your feta there! There will likely be many more options and they will be better quality. Feta is traditionally made from sheep’s milk (read the label to find out!) so if you are sensitive to dairy, it’s often easier on your stomach too!
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In the last several weeks, I have been thinking even more deeply than usual about all the ingredients I take for granted and/or don’t know much about - especially in terms of their origins and history. In the “Business Beyond Profit” course I took last week, one of the directives was to: “Give yourself a history lesson about the history of your industry. A true history.” So - this week I was thinking and wondering about feta - all my memories of feta, why the name “feta” stuck when similar cheeses are common to many countries across the Mediterranean / Balkans / Middle East, how this cheese is made, what culture I associate it with and whether that’s even correct, etc. I am also now deeply questioning every article I read about food - who wrote it and what’s their culture and what lens + experience are they speaking from?!
In some brief googling of feta, many articles came up about the EU designating feta cheese as a "protected designation of origin product" to Greece in 2002. A very similar cheese is common in Bulgaria - where it is called "sirene." Obviously this name didn't stick or spread the way "feta" did. Personally I associate feta with our family's "Lebanese salad" - which I grew up eating because I'm part Lebanese. In Lebanon they apparently call it "Bulgarian cheese." Anyways - the history and origins of foods have always fascinated me, but I often didn't think much about who was writing the food articles I was reading. I'm glad to be thinking about that more deeply now, and my appreciation for the variety of ingredients we have access to only deepens the more I question and re-question. In my opinion - all of this makes food even MORE fun (+ meaningful) to eat! Next up, I might just have to attempt to make feta cheese myself...
Finally - I mentioned it last week, but in case you missed it - I was interviewed on a friend's podcast - Listen here! It’s an hour long, so if you’re in a rush - skip to 35:06 (my favorite part) where I do a live “intuitive cooking lesson” in which I advise the hosts on how to switch up their go-to meals with a few simple changes. If you listen in full, you’ll hear: my thoughts on the Alison Roman drama, my awkward intro where the first thing I say about myself is my age (LOL, NERVOUS), and why I never cook boneless skinless chicken breasts.
I hope you love this salad if you make it, and happy weekend!
Love,
Jess
PS. I just switched my email service so if this looks a little different, that's why! Still figuring out a few of the technical details. If you see any issues, please do let me know.
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If you like this email, I would LOVE IT if you forward along to your favorite food-loving friends, or better yet, forward and then cook something together! Wannabe subscribers can sign up here. Thanks for reading!
In case you missed out, here are a few past issues to check out:
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Hi, I'm Jess! I help health-conscious, busy people transform their cooking from "chore" to "whippin it up!" through intuitive cooking, which I teach through online classes, free content, coaching and more. This is my newsletter, Food for Thought Fridays, where I share highly actionable tips and inspiration to help you cook more intuitively (which makes cooking feel easier and SO much more fun!). Once a month, I share a recipe that's really worth making, and I only share those with my email subscribers.
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