Sometimes you just want a good hearty salad to eat in the hot summer heat, especially when it’s made with some of your own fresh garden produce, in this case it’s a kale salad.

Yes, we over did it again with the kale, we grew too much this year!

My freezer is now stocked with kale leaves that I can break off and put into soups and stews in the dead of winter, I’ve given some away, made pestos, smoothies, you name it.

For salads, I like to pick the leaves when they’re nice and tender, wash it real good, remove the tough stems and then spin it dry, I then store a bunch in a big zip bag and keep it nice and cold in my fridge, ready to use when ever I want.

There’s no real recipe for this salad but the colorful, combo of ingredients I used were;

A mixture of curly and tuscan kale, chopped into bite size pieces, red and orange pepper strips, sliced cucumbers and radishes, olives, red onion, green onion, avocado, feta cheese, cherry tomatoes, toasted sliced almonds and roasted garbanzo beans.

For the roasted garbanzo beans, just open up a can, drain well, toss with olive oil, granulated garlic, paprika, oregano, salt and pepper, then onto a rimmed baking sheet in a 400 degree oven, roast until crunchy and crispy, around 30 minutes.

The creamy lemon dressing is so easy to make, I’m almost embarrassed to tell you…

Take a few heaping tablespoons of good mayo, add in 1 small garlic clove that has been grated on a micro plane, whisk in some real fresh lemon juice to thin it out and get a nice consistency, add salt and pepper to taste.

Spoon the dressing on top, toss and enjoy, that’s it!