- Jennifer Garner shared one of her favorite salad recipes with a spicy lime vinaigrette.
- Garner makes the salad with fresh veggies from her garden, plus quinoa, sunflower seeds and more.
- This salad is a great way to shake up your routine and enjoy the last of seasonal produce.
Summer may be winding down, but that doesn’t mean gardening season has come to an end. Plenty of veggies thrive in fall, from cabbage to squash, and avid gardeners like Jennifer Garner will tell you that even summer produce will keep going strong for quite a bit longer. In fact, Garner just took followers on a whirlwind tour of her incredible vegetable garden in a recent Instagram post and both her green thumb and her salad-making skills have us wanting to harvest our own backyard bounties to cook up a little kitchen magic.
“Welcome to salad season,” Garner says at the start of the clip. “Come on, let’s pick a salad. Radishes, some cilantro, some of that lettuce and arugula for a little pepper. Let’s get some limes for the dressing.”
In addition to Garner’s on-camera charm and contagious cooking enthusiasm, her gorgeous backyard garden is truly the stuff dreams are made of. As she whips around her greenhouse-style garden, cutting fresh romaine, harvesting carrots and radishes and smelling fresh citrus fruits fresh from the tree, Garner gathers her ingredients at an outdoor countertop space and goes to work.
Garner’s salad du jour? A Mega-Crunchy Romaine Salad she credits vegetarian recipe creator @cookieandkate with turning her onto. The salad is packed with fresh, leafy lettuce and crunchy veggies, and gets topped with delightful add-ins like quinoa, dried cranberries and sunflower seeds. The dressing also sounds amazing: a blend of lime juice, rice wine vinegar, cilantro and other sweet and tangy ingredients.
To make this beautiful garden salad at home, gather some cooked and rinsed quinoa, a small chopped head of romaine lettuce, some shredded carrots, chopped cabbage, chopped radishes, dried cranberries and raw sunflower seeds.
Combine everything in a bowl with the dressing, which is made by blending olive oil, lime juice, rice vinegar, fresh cilantro, a touch of honey or maple syrup, a couple of garlic cloves, sea salt, and a little chipotle or regular chili powder in a blender until emulsified. (If you’d prefer not to dirty the blender, you could also shake all the ingredients up in a jar or other sealed container—just be sure to mince that garlic.)
Regarding the salad dressing, Garner offers a bit of advice: “Taste, and adjust as necessary—it should be zippy, but if it’s overwhelmingly tart, add a bit more honey. If you’d like a little more kick, add another ¼ teaspoon chili powder.”
Not only does Garner’s garden salad sound delicious, flavorful, and ultra-crunchy, but it’s also got tons of healthy ingredients. A whole grain like quinoa can help regulate blood sugar and improve digestion, while romaine lettuce is great for eye, bone and skin health and garlic helps support your immune system.
Garner ends her #PretendCookingShow video in her garden at a table, where she happily munches away on her freshly-made salad. “I am gonna enjoy it in my garden,” she says. “Care to join me? There’s something so fun about growing, making, and eating a meal without ever having to go inside.”
We definitely see where she’s coming from—and we appreciate the breath of fresh air.
