Ingredients (feeds two people well)

• 3 bell peppers · all colors are beautiful!
• 1 big, girthy cucumber
• 2 big, juicy tomatoes
• 1 medium sized onion · red preferred
• 1 can of maize/sweet corn
• 1 pack of feta cheese
• 1 or 2 baguettes, ciabattas or other crispy-fluffy white bread
• dark balmic vinegar
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

Preparation

1. Wash the bell peppers, the cucumber, the tomatoes, and anything else that requires cleaning before use.
2. Drain the can of corn, the feta and anything else packaged with water.
3. If you believe in pre-heating, now is the time to pre-heat the oven as per instructions on the baguette.
4. Proceed to cut all of the ingredients into fair pieces. Excluding the corn, the fluids and the spices, of course, silly. While cutting, do put the baguette into the oven so it can bake as per instructions while you cut.
5. Throw all the diced veggies and every other main ingredient into a huge bowl and mix.
6. Serve salad on plates. Everyone partaking in this meal can then season their own portion on the plate with vinegar, oil, salt and pepper. Do not season in the bowl. This allows you to sponge up the resulting vinegar/oil/spice/feta/corn mix with the warm, fluffy insides of the baguette once the plate is otherwise empty. Yum.

Backstory

This is actually one of the first "recipes" that I learned and therefore I found it an appropriate first recipe on this website, as well.

It's a traditional salad in my family that has gone through many iterations but its essence has stayed the same: a simple, fresh and juicy salad with bell peppers, corn and cucumber, without leaves or dressing or all the other things people usually don't quite enjoy in salads. Sometimes, we added tuna, sometimes we didn't, sometimes we left out the tomatoes or this or that other vegetable, but the core of it all prevailed over time.

Particular joy I'd get as a child from bathing the bread in the leftover liquid on the plate consisting of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, and occasionally even stray pieces of feta and corn. There's something about the mix of sweet, sour, oily and spicy that complements the crunchy and fluffy texture of the bread so well and makes for a great "second plate" per plate.

Contrary to what many people think, this is actually a very filling meal! Especially because you can just get seconds over and over again: it's just vegetables, mostly.

As a dinner option that's easy to prepare, cheap, relatively healthy (especially if you leave out the corn and feta, and go slow on the bread), and extremely yummy as a bonus, I plan at least one of these salads a week these days.