This is one of my favorite summer salads.  With sweet corn coming into season and tomatoes and peppers just around the corner, this is a great Farmer's Market dish. The dressing that I make for this makes the salad bright and crisp. It's easy to feed a crowd with this.

I like to grill the corn first in its husks and then char it.  I leave the corn in its husks and soak it in water for about 30 minutes.  This allows the corn to steam on the grill first before pulling back the husks and giving the corn a final char.  

For the sweet peppers, you can use any sweet pepper you like but I am really loving the mini sweet peppers right now for raw dishes - you can slice them into such nice little rings.

Have you ever wanted to fix a Caprese Salad during the winter months but didn't, because you knew it just wasn't going to be any good with bland, anemic winter tomatoes?  Well, if you use this method you can have a tasty Winter Caprese Salad.  The secret is to slow roast the tomatoes, removing the moisture from them and concentrating the flavor.  You get a very intense tasting tomato out of a mediocre winter tomato.

I'm tired of putting out a great big salad bowl for dinners, having everyone get their salads and then seeing that all the goodies in the salad have fallen to the bottom of the bowl and very little actually made it into people's salads.  A lot of those goodies sometimes are expensive, too - pine nuts or pancetta.  Sometimes the diced veggies like bell pepper will fall to the bottom.  Drives me crazy. Solution?  Salad in jars!

I know a gal who is so obsessed with avocados that she has written a cookbook devoted to just avocados!  She is Gaby Dalkin, author of "What's Gaby Cooking" and she just happens to be my goddaughter.  "Absolutely Avocados" will show you many new and fun ways to use avocados.  Her love of avocados really comes through in this book.  It has certainly given me a new appreciation of what you can do with an avocado.

I have so much basil growing right now it's fantastic and a problem at the same time.  I always grow too much and this year I really overdid it.  In addition to planting some out on the patio in pots, I started some from seed in big trays inside.  I did three plantings at different dates. My plan was to actually remove the plants from the trays when they got 6 to 8 leaves - just at the perfect time to harvest.  This is what they do in Liguria, where pesto is King. They only use the youngest, most tender leaves. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I found myself cutting off the leaves and letting more grow! What a wimp.   Now I have a ton more basil than I need.  So I'm really making pesto a lot.  

Pomegranates have become so popular - they're delicious and healthy.  But they can be a pain to deseed, squirting juice everywhere and making a mess.  I'll show you how to easily clean a pomegranate and get all those seeds out.

I'm going to be posting a lot of pasta dishes this winter, so I thought I would give you a nice refreshing, light salad first!  The key to making a great salad is two things:  1) make your own dressing  and 2) only lightly dress the greens.  Salad dressing shouldn't weigh down a salad - it should just lightly coat it.  The greens and the fruit or vegetables should be the star.   The salad should be refreshing, not a soggy mess.  

Aren't we loving this part of summer, with all the fresh tomatoes and basil?  I sure wish we had a longer growing season here in Michigan.  Here's a great summer salad that uses all those tomatoes and basil and is as beautiful as it is delicious. 

When I posted about the Auction Dinner in November, I mentioned making my favorite vinaigrette for the salad. I got so many requests for the recipe, I thought I should go ahead and share it with you.  Many people do not know how to make a basic vinaigrette.  This is really something that is great to learn because homemade vinaigrettes are so delicious and fresh tasting and far superior to anything you can buy in a bottle. You can also use them to dress vegetables, not just salads.

When so many things are ripening all at once in the garden, this potato salad makes good use of several vegetables. My mother used to make this salad all the time in the summer when we had so many tomatoes and green beans in the garden. I have added pancetta and capers to her dish because I like the saltiness of the pancetta and capers with the potatoes.