Summer breakfast salad with herbed goat cheese

I love breakfast. It might be my favorite meal of the day. While my husband favors the standard eggs, bacon, grits and toast, I adore changing things up. I’ve also discovered salad for breakfast. For most Southerners, this seems like sacrilege, but hear me out: If you eat a few veggies at every meal, then you’re much more likely to get the recommended daily intake of fiber, vitamins and minerals and stay at a healthy weight.

Eating veggies at lunch and dinner is a no-brainer, but breakfast? YES! I’ve posted smoothie recipes which are the most obvious way to get veggies at breakfast, but I hope you’ll consider this yummy breakfast salad. Use it as a springboard for variations on this theme. My salad ingredients vary by season, according to what’s growing locally; that’s why this is a summer breakfast salad. The tomatoes and banana peppers in this recipe grew in my garden and the cucumbers and peaches came from my local CSA. A fall version might involve butternut squash and apples.

Salads don’t have to be complicated, nor contain tons of ingredients. My basic ‘recipe’ for salad involves a fruit, a veggie and a protein. Sometimes the base is a leaf (lettuce, spinach or kale) but other times not. While I favor greens in my breakfast smoothie, this breakfast salad foregoes the leaves in favor of juicy tomatoes and peaches, which is great in summer when it’s hot and we have to be ever vigilant about hydrating.

Ingredients: (per serving)

1 Roma tomato, cut into bite-sized pieces

1 pickling cucumber, halved lengthwise, then sliced

1 fresh banana pepper, cut into rings (if you don’t have a banana pepper, use 1/2 of a bell pepper)

1 medium peach, pitted and cut into bite-sized pieces

1/2 Tbs herbed or plain goat cheese or feta

Instructions:

  1. Add tomato, cucumber, pepper and peach to a bowl.

  2. Salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Top with cheese crumbles.

  4. Optional: dress with 1/2 Tbs flavored balsamic (I used blueberry) vinegar.