Refreshing

As a quick credit, I may have pilfered this idea from Joy The Baker. Also, if I ever use the word "may," I actually mean "will," "have," "did" or some variation on that theme. That said, today I have a salad for you. Well, it is technically a salad in that some green bits most assuredly exist within it and we're making a dressing, however, it's not a pansy little side salad. It is carb central. We have rice and potatoes and chickpeas and all sorts of good stuff. There is an argument to be made that it is healthy, though I wouldn't necessarily say that it's slimming.

Being who I am, I took Joy's recipe and made the dressing far more acidic and stripped down some of the embellishments since I didn't have a bushel of parsley sitting in my refrigerator. It's delicious and a really great summer evening meal when you just don't have it in you to eat something hot and straight out of the oven. The salad works equally well cold as it does with the potatoes and rice still warm, and if you make a sizable batch, you can snack on it for days... or feed it to your family, if you want to be nice.

Don't worry, making dressing is actually easier than shaking the bottle of the store bought kind enough to have the perfect distribution of floating bits.

Wild Rice Salad with yogurt vinaigrette
Original recipe found on www.joythebaker.com, should you wish to undo some of my changes.

For the wild rice salad, combine the following:

4 cups of cooked wild or brown rice (2 cups uncooked)
1 (15 ounce) can garbanzo beans, drained
1 (15 ounce) can marinated artichoke hearts, coarsely chopped
about 3 cups coarsely chopped cooked potatoes
1 cup fresh blueberries
2-3 cups fresh baby spinach leaves

For the yogurt vinaigrette, whisk together the following:

1 heaping spoonful Dijon or whole grain mustard
1 heaping spoonful of honey
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 cup Greek yogurt (I used 2% Greek yogurt)
salt and pepper to taste
about 1/4 cup chopped fresh chives
a few mint leaves chopped
1-2 small garlic cloves, finely chopped

To cut down on the acidity of the dressing, you can also add about 1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley. It gives it a slightly lighter, fresher flavor.

The dressing will keep for 4-8 days, but if you have leftovers to store, you should keep the spinach leaves separate until right before you eat the salad, otherwise they will wilt and go horribly awry.