"Welcome Summer" Salad Bowl

It's Tuesday and it is now officially SUMMER...well, in a few hours!  To welcome summer in, I decided to make us ginormous salads for dinner.  We are having huge bowls of fresh romaine lettuce, sliced carrots, quartered Cherub cherry tomatoes, crispy red peppers, and chunks of chicken tenders that I cooked in the oven.   I also got to try out my new salad spinner since I now buy my own romaine lettuce and cut it up instead of using bagged salad.  I occasionally will used bagged salad in a pinch but once I went back to buying and cutting up my own lettuce again...the difference in freshness was unbelievable.  Bagged salads begin to deteriorate almost as soon as you open the bag (some even look bad in the store days before their expiration dates).  I also find that more and more they are using lots of the "heavier" stalks than the actual green leafy lettuce leaves.  I usually wash my lettuce and then wrap it in paper towels to dry before cutting it up...but finally decided to see if a salad spinner would work better...and guess what -- it does (and it's actually fun to use).  Yahooooooo!!!  I washed my lettuce, cut it up and gave it a few good spins in the spinner and "voila"...perfectly dried, crisp, green...FRESH lettuce for our salads.  Bye bye bagged salad and hello fresh! 

The salads were so beautiful and colorful that I had to snap a few pics of them.  Check out how red those Cherub tomatoes are -- I just love them.  Enjoy!

BOOM!