INSIDE: Health 80 food health the scene sports V. t travel MEM Another crop of delicious, cool summer salads. ANNABEL COHEN Special to the Jewish News ot, heavy and overly starchy foods can leave you with a groggy, sleepy, almost drugged feeling in the summertime. Add summer temperatures in the 80s and you're done for. As registered dietitian and health care consultant Beverly Price explains, "The body needs to use a lot of energy to process high-fat and high-caloric foods. So you use the energy that could be spent enjoying the weather to digest what you've just eaten." Price, who conducts semi- nars and lectures about all aspects of nutrition and health, believes you should listen to your body. Instinctively, summer brings the desire for lighter meals and lots of vegetables. "Your body craves nutrients found in colorful vegetables and fruits and innately knows that these foods are easily digested," said Price. It also follows that the appetite for cooler or uncooked foods keeps us out of a hot kitchen. Vegetables are like an emo- tional antitoxin, making us feel all-powerful and invigor- ating. And almost no other time of the year does a salad Dulled white-bean pasta with roasted not only suffice as a meal, peppers, tomatoes and olives but becomes a meal of choice. Salads are evolving. Chefs are creating different, wilder and more complex combinations that break the rules of our salad days — greens, tomatoes and dressing. Old-fashioned, garden- variety combinations are now merely fallbacks, consolation for when there's nothing else around. Indeed the lacier the lettuce and more otherworldly look- ing the ingredients, the better. Today, it's as if anything that can be chopped and tossed can become a salad. Think of a favorite meal like roasted chicken and potatoes. This can be a salad. Simply cube the chicken, dice the roasted potato and toss with arugula, dried cranberries and chopped celery for crunch. For dressing, try one of the sugges- tions below. Need some other thought starters? There are books galore with recipes for fas- cinating, ingenious and certainly resourceful combinations of ingredients to please any liking. Main-Course Salads by Ray Overton is one such book. It's loaded with salads with accents from around the world. Other works such as Salad Days by Norman Koplas and Michael Grand, plus Susan Simon's Insalate: Authentic Salads For All Seasons, have beautiful pic- tures of many of the offer- ings. All these will get you started in con- cocting your own salad cre- ations. Salad entrees used to be like quiche — chick food. No longer. Real men are eating salads by the acre and proud of it. It even fits into that low-carbohydrate Spinach salad with dried fruits, diet craze that lets you eat real dressing — avocado and goat cheese even that sloppy blue cheese kind — as long as you skip the croutons and muffins. Try some of the cool summer salad recipes below: SPINACH SALAD WITH DRIED FRUITS, AVOCADO AND GOAT CHEESE Salad: 12 cups baby spinach, washed 1 cup dried cherries, cranberries or blueberries 1-2 cups sliced mushrooms 1 cup thinly sliced Bermuda or red onion 1/2 cup cashews or toasted sliced almonds, optional 2 ripe avocados crumbled goat cheese, garnish Dressing: 1/2 cup olive oil 1/4 cup red wine vinegar 1 t. dried oregano 1 t. sugar 1/2 cup crumbled, soft, mild goat cheese (like chevre), room temperature salt and pepper to taste Toss spinach with cranberries, mushrooms, onions and nuts, if using. Make dressing: Place all ingredients in a medium bowl and whisk until well 8/10 2001