Panzanella Salad

The first official recipe I made after deciding to make the change to a whole food plant based lifestyle thirteen months ago for anyone other than myself was a Panzanella Salad. We were having my sister and her family over to swim and I was nervous about what I was going to make. My husband, who is a meat eater, offered to grill but I knew I had to have something I could eat also. It was nearing triple digits so I figured it should be something that did not take a lot of effort over a hot stove either. I had been craving tomatoes and bread so I decided give this salad a try.

I had more than half a loaf of this yummy, crusty, seedy bread I needed to use up so I diced that up and baked it into croutons for the salad.

Then I chopped up what I had for tomatoes and cucumbers and added a red onion and white beans for some protein. I kept the dressing to simply white balsamic vinegar with a bunch of chopped parsley.

I didn’t mix in the croutons until right before serving so they stayed crispy. This was absolutely delicious and refreshing for a hot summer day. The best part was I could feed this to my guests without the awkwardness of having to serve them anything that they had a preconceived notion of being “vegan” food.