Summer Strawberry Salad

This is the most delicious, refreshing salad that is perfect for summer! Take this to your next pot-luck and you'll be the star! The secret is the salad dressing. This is one of those salads that you need to keep simple--if you add a ton of stuff to it, the individual flavors will get muddied, and you want to enjoy each flavor to the fullest!

Ingredients:
2 heads Romain lettuce, torn up (I used red-leaf lettuce)
1 cup purple, seedless grapes, sliced
1 strawberry basket, cleaned and sliced
2 stalks green onions, cleaned and sliced
1/2 cup walnuts, candied (optional)

Salad dressing ingredients:
2 Tbsp. dry Italian dressing
1/3 cup orange juice
1/3 cup rice vinegar
1 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup sugar

Mix and refrigerate. To candy the walnuts, chop and add to a frying pan on the stove. Sprinkle about 2-3 Tbsp. sugar over top. Mix and cook on low heat until sugar melts and caramelizes. Cool and sprinkle on salad if desired.

Chilled Strawberry Soup

4 cups fresh strawberries
1 (12 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup white sugar
1/4 cup sour cream
12 sprigs fresh mint

Rinse strawberries with cool water to clean and then pat dry to absorb excess water. Remove strawberry stems and set aside 12 for later use.

In a large bowl, combine remaining strawberries, whipped topping, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla and sugar. With an electric mixer, mix on low speed for 5 to 7 minutes or until sugar has dissolved completely and mixture is smooth. Add sour cream and mix 1 minute. Place in refrigerator to chill.

Serve soup in chilled bowls and garnish with whole strawberries and fresh mint sprigs.

Strawberry Fresh Pie

I know Fall is coming on and this is really a summer dessert, but strawberries were a reasonable price here last week, so I got some and made this. It was so delicious and refreshing. I try to avoid making actual pie crusts whenever possible, so I opted for the graham cracker crust. However, I discovered we didn't have any graham crackers, so I used gingersnaps instead. It was super tasty! I just pulverized them and drizzled melted butter over them and baked for 10 minutes.

1 3-oz. package strawberry jello
1 3-oz. package cook-n-serve vanilla pudding mix
1 tsp. lemon juice
2 cups water
8 oz. container whipped topping
pie shell or graham-cracker-crumb-lined dish
1 clam-shell of strawberries, sliced

Mix together first 4 ingredients and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and cool. When cooled, add all or most of container of whipped topping and sliced strawberries. Mix and pour into pie shell. Refrigerate until ready to serve.