Saturday is my most favorite day of the week. I love being able to sleep late, drink some of my genius husband’s brilliant coffee, and go off on my weekly shopping run with my oldest son, Alex. Our first stop is always Clausen’s Bakery in Middleton for bread, buns, and whatever else looks irresistible. Lately they’ve been baking a Pain de Epi that is awesome…it has a crisp crust that maintains it’s tenderness and a nice, springy crumb…it’s my new favorite.

The next stop is the public library where we pick up our books, dvds, and cds that we have waiting for us on our hold shelf. Then it’s off to the Westside Farmer’s Market. This week there was an enormous diversity of locally grown produce. I got sweet corn, parsley, holy basil, chard, red cabbage, tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, carrots, cucumbers, cherries, and lettuce. I also got a huge red and yellow dahlia. Our last stop is the grocery store at Midvale where we get all the other essentials and then we head home. Lucky us, all that shopping and we’re back home in less than an hour and a half.

The other fabulous thing about Saturday is lunch. Today we ate fruits, cheeses, bread, and the very same salad I prepared for a potluck we had at work yesterday…but since I forgot to take a picture of it yesterday and it was so delicious I thought I’d make it again for the genius husband and the kids. This salad is simple to make, uses common ingredients found at the grocery store, and is full of healthy antioxidants and vitamins. Because the potluck was to honor a colleague who loves the color purple I was noodling with the concept of purple food but I couldn’t come up with anything other than blueberries. That’s when I decided on a salad of blueberries, chicken, arugala, baby spinach, and sunflower seeds all tossed together with oil and vinegar. For today’s batch I used leaves of red romaine instead of baby spinach, and I added one small red onion sliced thin and some parsley and holy basil that I rough-chopped, otherwise it’s the same. Both salads were made with grocery store rotisserie chicken.

The sweet and sour juiciness of the berries complements the chicken and the slightly bitter arugala balances the rich chickeny flavor. The spinach keeps the contrasting flavors from overwhelming each other. Tossed with olive oil and Vom Foss’ Star Apple vinegar it becomes a sweet, peppery, savory, delight. The salad got rave reviews from my friends at work and the husband loved it, the kids…not so much. They thought the idea of fruit with chicken was “just wacky, mom”.

Please note that if you’re not using Vom Foss Star apple vinegar you might want to add a squeeze of honey to your vinegar and oil.