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by Robin

I LOVE me a salad that keeps for days - and I adore how often these recipes get better with time! Some kind of magic happens in the fridge - that turns a great tasting salad into something even more wonderful with some time for the ingredients to get to know each other.

Why I also love lettuce-free salads for summer is their sheer convenience. I am a faithful meal planner during the school year - it keeps us on track for time and budget! But, for some reason, when school's out I slack off almost completely.

We have this blind spot when planning our summer meals: Summertime meal planning sounds like, "We'll just barbecue something. No problem." And then Ed fires up the BBQ and grills something wonderful. Problem is 5 minutes before supper he pops his head inside and says, "Oh yeah, we'll need a vegetable." And then we scramble.

We don't ever forget vegetables during the school year! What happens to our brains in summer?! If we're lucky there's something we can harvest from our driveway vegetable garden, but sometimes we're a bit stuck.

This is where salads that keep well show their quality: they can happily be waiting in the fridge for when we forget to plan something. They're also wonderful for potlucks and parties - make them days ahead and there's no frantic prep right before.

I created this 3-Minute Broccoli Coleslaw with this in mind. It was inspired by an absolutely delicious coleslaw that my mother-in-law often makes. As usual with my recipes - I took her's and figured out how to make it in the laziest way possible. The results are fast, easy and pretty healthy.