Mexican Grilled Shrimp Caesar Salad

Warm weather is gloriously here in the Northeast — or close enough to have me itching to be outside just about every moment I can. This is the time of year of great hope for me. Enough of my gardens are blooming that I (delusionally) think my thumb is just the slightest hint of green and that I will accomplish great things this year. By July, the insanity of this thought is always clear but for now I am hopeful and so when the day is warm and sunny I want to be outside playing in the dirt.

It’s also a time of lighter eating in general I think. A fresh salad and a little bread and cheese can really hit the spot when the temperature rises. And so on just such a day, I headed to my pile o’ magazine pages (HA! I bet you thought I had bailed on my little experiment already! Oh ye of little faith.) and found this grilled shrimp salad from a recent Real Simple.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve gotten a little depressed about what passes for Caesar salad these days. Ask for it in a restaurant and you’ll often receive a sodden mass of lettuce drowning in a dense dressing. It’s complete overkill. This salad is the exact opposite: light and zippy. Plus you can whip it up in about 20 minutes, leaving you plenty of time to play in the garden.

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