Summer Lunch for All

This weekend I volunteered to host a meeting of my triathlon group’s mentor committee which includes about six women who are all very health-conscious. This wouldn’t have been hard had it been dinner but we decided on lunch instead. For some reason, planning a large mid-day meal really stumped me at first because I was worried about cooking a lot of food for healthy people so no huge plates of meats or carbs. So what’s a girl to do?

The answer is head to the Atherton Market whose vendors’ stalls are literally overflowing with color and beautiful ingredients right now. Any reader of this blog knows I’m enamored of the beautiful tomatoes that are in great abundance but there is also okra, peaches, and melons now appearing at the market as well. I also decided to take another stab at mayonnaise which I failed at horribly the first time around. With the help of some great readers’ comments on my previous post, I was able to make amazing olive oil mayo from scratch the day before the lunch which was amazing in the different salads!

Here is the menu I came up with:

• “Fried” Okra
• Tomatoes and cucumbers with balsalmic vinegar
• Egg salad on Nova’s bread
• Chicken salad on Nova’s bread

Below are the recipes for the egg and chicken salads which were excellent because my guests could choose whether to eat them on bread or by themselves. For both, just chop the protein to your desired size then add the rest of the ingredients and chill for at least one hour. For the okra, just toss chopped okra in beaten eggs then in flour mixture including chili powder, salt and pepper. Then sauté the okra in a frying pan, covered, until brown on all sides.

Egg Salad (v)

6 hard boiled eggs

1 teaspoon mustard

½ cup onion, minced

¼ cup mayo

1 dash curry powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Chicken Salad

2 large chicken breast, cooked

¼ cup mayo

¼ cup onions, minced

The eggs and chicken were from Windy Hill Farm, mustard from Simply Local,  and the onions from the Lomax Incubator Farm.