It’s early on the morning of July 5th and I’m at my desk, catching up on yesterday’s work.

It was the least Fourthy Fourth I can remember at our house, with nary a dash of pomp nor circumstance. I just wasn’t feeling it. But old habits die hard, so I took the day off. It seemed the patriotic thing to do.

I'm sharing three of my all-time favorite salad recipes this week. Summertime is a wonderful season to indulge in a healthy menu. We're so very blessed with an abundance of fresh local produce in the Lowcountry. Just add your favorite protein topped with a drizzle of vinaigrette to a pile of mixed greens and beautiful and delicious entrees will appear before your eyes. Enjoy!

“By all rights, that morning should have been a newspaperman’s dream.  There were fantastic stories of escape, including recounting of fear and elation.  Any one of them would have made a first-page feature story in any newspaper. Yet I was defeated by the flood of experiences. I listened until the stories finally became merged, overlapping and paralleling and contradicting, until the whole adventure became a composite, and today it is in my mind as in theirs a sort of generalized blur.” – Ernie Pyle, Here Is Your War (New York, Henry Holt, 1943)

These days, my friends and loved ones slide down both sides on the arc of the political rainbow, and I am a better person because of them. Without an array of conservative, moderate, and liberal thinkers in my inner circle, I would not have the ability to hold the debate inside of my head to ferret out what I hold true, what I struggle to understand, and what I cannot accept. Political discussions wake me up and remind me of my freedoms under our Bill of Rights, and my ease in taking them for granted growing up in America.