Confession Number One:  I hate pasta salad.  Always have.  Pasta salad is mushy and tastes like bad Italian dressing.  So you can understand my hesitancy in calling this dish that I absolutely love a pasta salad.  This salad hasn’t even seen a bottle of Italian dressing and its crunch-factor laughs in the face of all things mushy.

The one thing this dish does have in common with pasta salad is that it’s beyond simple to make.  Orzo.  Feta cheese.  Toasted pine nuts.  Dried cranberries.  Chopped arugula.  Olive oil.  Lemon juice.  Salt/pepper.  Done.  Confession Number Two: I’ve absolutely eaten a large bowl of this for dinner before.  So, here you have it, a pasta salad that is nothing like pasta salad.

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Is the summer really almost halfway over?  I’ve been so busy studying for this little exam that I’ve hardly had time to notice, let alone enjoy, the weather.  Though I did enjoy the pleasure of a particularly vicious mosquito attack … but that’s another story.  Ah, the joys of summer in the city!

When it’s hot outside and life is hectic inside, the last thing you want to do is spend hours in the kitchen.  Forget about hours, even 20 minutes seems like an eternity when it’s sticky and soupy outside.  Summer calls for nothing more than a few minutes of actual standing-in-front-of-the-stove kinda cooking.  Summer is the era of simple salads and simple slaws.  This chicken salad fits the bill perfectly.  No goopy mayo, this light, tart salad with crisp green apples is the perfect summer meal.

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I subscribe to a ton of food blogs and, as a result, I generally get a handful of recipes personally delivered to my email inbox each day.  The gems get filed away under the bulging To Make List.  Some get a quizzical, “Really? You think that tastes/looks/smells like a good idea?” and are promptly filed in the mysterious Gmail “archive,” never to be heard from again.  Very rarely do I receive a recipe that produces a Run-Don’t-Walk level of urgency.  This salad was of the Run-Don’t-Walk variety.

The recipe showed up on a Monday.  Had it not been for the fact that I am currently studying for a rather large, life-altering exam (ahem, The Bar) that will determine the validity of my last three years of oh-so expensive schooling, the salad would have been made that very evening.  Rest assured that despite my current level of chaos, this salad was still made before the end of the week.  You would think that this story would end with the expected disappointment that usually results when one has such heightened expectations.  But, you would be wrong.

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We are stuck in that weird time of year right before spring when you are just plain tired of winter foods but the spring fruits and veggies haven’t really started to blossom yet.  As a result, cabbage salads are popping up all over the food blogosphere! Cabbage is perfect for this uninspiring time of year because it can make for a very light salad that evokes the upcoming spring.

This salad (or slaw) was the result of one of those what’s-in-the-fridge-that-I-can-make-something-for-dinner moments.  It is painfully easy.  Almost embarrassingly easy.  This would be fantastic to take to a potluck or a summer BBQ in a few months.  It is sweet and crunchy with a little kick! The recipe below makes enough for two people (or one very hungry person) so you would want to double or triple if you intend to share.  I used Fuji apples since that is what I had lying around but you can use whatever crisp apple variety you prefer.

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