While winter brings along delicious meals like hearty soups and casseroles, I’ve been craving something fresher.

Summer salads, although usually saved for warmer months are a really quick and easy way to lighten up your meals when it’s chilly. This week, we made a Quinoa Israeli Salad — a chilled and healthy alternative for a dinner side dish or fresh lunch.

Ingredients

1 tomato

1 red onion

1 bunch of parsley

1/2 large cucumber

Pinch of salt

Drizzle of olive oil

Drizzle of lemon juice

1 cup of quinoa (we used steam-able, in the bag version — but choose whichever you’d like)

To start — cook up the quinoa (which will take the longest). Follow instructions on the bag/box or heat up a steam-able version in the microwave (like we did) when you are really tight for time. Once set, it’s time to chop.

The number of vegetables in this recipe are really up to you — if you’re looking for more tomato, feel free to chop up two. Not into that much onion? Half of a small one will work too. Taste as you go and add to your liking.

Equally chop up the tomato (we took out the seeds and juicy center), cucumber, onion and parsley into small pieces.

Next, just mix in the pre-cooked quinoa and drizzle a bit of olive oil and lemon juice, followed by a pinch of salt. Chill in the refrigerator for a couple hours. The amount of servings was perfect to add as an additional side to dinners for the rest of the week or as a nice salad for lunch. Make a little extra to last a couple days.