One of my favorite things about the start of garden season is clipping the first homegrown spring greens. If you grow lettuce, spinach, arugula, or other greens, you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, I highly recommend getting a few seeds and giving it a try. Homegrown greens have flavor that is often muted or missing from store-bought ones, and you can buy seeds in varieties that grocery stores won’t carry. These seeds grow easily in the ground or in pots. My sister seeds two “lettuce bowls”—wide, low plastic pots—for my parents each year that sit in the shade on their porch all summer. When the supply gets low, they simply pull the straggly plants and tuck in a few new seeds.

My homegrown lettuces and other greens mainly land in salads, as I share this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon. I also tuck them into tacos and sandwiches, fold them into hot pasta or curry, and pair them with eggs.

Learn more about using fresh greens and get the complete recipe for Arugula Salad with Asparagus and Shaved Parmesan in my column.

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Twice as Tasty

Green salads can be made with so many toppings that you rarely need a recipe. My favorite salads start with a quick stroll through the garden, snips in hand, and then a prowl of the fridge for leftovers. One summer I shared #dailysalad photos, but really I eat salads almost daily for lunch every summer.

Homemade salad dressings are also simple and easy—and just as adaptable to whatever herbs are ready in the garden and ingredients are in your cupboard or fridge. They’re so tasty that once you start pairing them with homegrown greens, you’ll never buy overpriced salad dressing again.

Some green salads and dressings are so delicious that I have written recipes for them. Use them as guidelines, rather than strict lists of ingredients, and substitute in the types of greens, vinegar, oil, and other ingredients you already have rather than making a special trip to the store. Here are just a few of my favorite combinations that use salad greens. You can find more in the recipe index.

• Spring Pasta and Fresh Mozzarella Salad
• Herbed Bean Salad with Fresh Mozzarella
• Spinach Salad with Cranberry Sauce Dressing
• Warm Quinoa and Feta Salad
• Taco Salad

You can also learn more about making the best DIY salad dressing in this blog post.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.