Perfect Summer Supper

I am sitting on my deck, enjoying a summer breeze, and the smell of my lavender and other flowers in the garden.  Tonight we ate out here, and had what I consider the perfect summer supper.  Easy, cool, light, but extremely filling and nutritious.  Salad Nicoise, homemade bubbly lemonade, and rhubarb blueberry pie.

Salad Nicoise

salad greens from the garden or farm market, I used about 8 cups for 4 of us
3-4 hard boiled eggs chopped
2-3 potatoes, cooked, peeled, and chopped
1 1/2 - 2 cups cooked fresh green beans, you want them still a touch crisp, not soft
1 cup of your favorite olives
2 cans water packed tuna, rinsed and drained well, optional for our resident vegetarians

What I like to do is put everything out in bowls and let everyone fix their own, like a salad bar.

The dressing is 2 T. country french vinaigrette seasoning from Penzey's mixed with 2 T. water, let sit a few minutes, mix with 1/3 cup each red wine vinegar and olive oil and 1 tsp dijon mustard, you can use any homemade dressing you like best though.

Pile on a platter or individual bowls and pour some dressing over.  I like to have the greens, beans, olives and tuna cold, and the rest still slightly warm.  Yum.

Homemade Bubbly Lemonade

I have a bit of an obsession with seltzer.  When it went on sale one time I bought 31 bottles.  31!  Obsession, like I said.  So recently we decided to invest in a soda stream machine, which makes liters of seltzer in seconds with just water and a co2 cartridge.  We LOVE it and use it daily.  So now we are working on mixing seltzer into all sorts of things, tonight lemonade.

Juice into a saucepan:
1 huge orange, or 2 regular
2 lemons
2 limes
Mix in 1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar, we did about 1/3 cup and it was just right for us.
Heat just till sugar dissolves.  Pour over a pitcher with a couple cups of ice, and stir in 2 liters of plain seltzer.  So incredibly refreshing!

Later on I will post the pie recipe, with a half whole wheat crust.  It was so good!  Happy summer!