Tis the season for cool, fresh, easy side dishes, am I right?

Nights like tonight, I’ve spent all day working on my computer, and the first thing I do when I get home is to go putter in the garden a little bit. If I’m lucky, I can pick a few cucumbers, a few cherry tomatoes, and be halfway to a salad. OR, I can go to the grocery store, snag a few items in the produce aisle, and have something easy in a few minutes. It’s my favorite part of summer cooking.

In our part of the country, a lot of people don’t have air conditioning in their house – or maybe they have a window unit in the bedrooms but they don’t A/C the entire house because when you only need it a couple of days a year, it’s not really worth it to install the whole deal.

But that often results in our not turning the oven on a lot in the evenings. Which is fine with me! Because as you may have noticed, I freaking LOVE a good salad!

Now all I need is to focus on getting a great protein to pair with the salad!

In the meantime, I’ll be patiently awaiting tomato season’s arrival. (yes, I know you can get tomatoes… but what I am really waiting for is the ones in my backyard. It really does make a taste difference!)

This salad is already paleo, Whole 30 friendly, gluten free and low carb. I think a nice piece of grilled fish would be the perfect pairing with the sesame and lime flavors and the crunchy fresh cukes!

Cool Cucumber Avocado Sesame Salad

Ingredients

• 2 cucumbers, VERY thinly sliced (use a mandolin slicer if you have one)
• 1 ripe avocado, thinly sliced
• 4 radishes, thinly sliced
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
• Juice of 1 lime
• 1 tbsp. sesame oil
• 1 tsp. rice wine vinegar
• Heavy pinch of salt
• 2 tsp. sesame seeds

Instructions

1. Toss cucumbers, radishes and cherry tomatoes in a big bowl.
2. Add lime juice, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar and salt and toss again.
3. Finally, top with avocado (If you toss it too much it will fall apart ) and top avocado slices with a little additional squeeze of lime to prevent browning.
4. Top with sesame seeds.