A quick, easy, and delicious summer recipe

This watermelon feta salad is everything! I have a summer obsession with watermelon, I eat it for breakfast, snacks, lunch, dinner, whenever! I could go through a full watermelon all by myself. For some reason though, I always forget about watermelon during every other season! Then, summer comes around and it’s like discovering it all over again! It’s fantastic!

This summer I have been on a watermelon binge! I use it in almost everything I can think of. But this recipe has been my favorite so far. It’s super refreshing, delicious, and is really high in nutrients and low in calories! This is really helpful for me because I eat a TON of this! Because of recipes like this, I can eat a lot and feel satisfied. And I don’t feel any kind of guilt or do any damage to my gut or body.

The more recipes I try like this one, the more I see how amazing food is. The effects it can have on your body, mind, looks, everything! It is so crazy! I have way more energy, my skin is so much softer and clearer, my metabolism is higher, I am way stronger and feel more athletic without putting in more effort, and I hardly ever get sick! Meals like this and healthy eating is so much more than looking good, that is still one of my favorite added benefits because let’s be honest who doesn’t like looking better? But, healthy eating can mean a better life with less pain!

This watermelon feta salad recipe is not only great for your health but it is great to take to barbecues, picnics, lake days, potlucks, and really whatever you have going this recipe is there for you! It’s a little sweet, a little salty, a little peppery, a little spicy, and just so freaking good! This recipe is easy and simple, and did I mention it tastes really good? It will seem like you put so much effort and thought in but it only took a few minutes. Win-win!

Watermelon Feta Salad Recipe

Salad

• 2 cups washed arugula
• 1/2 cup cubed watermelon (pretty small, like 1-inch x 1-inch)
• 1/4 cup crumbled feta
• 1/4 red onion (cut as thinly as possible)

Dressing

• 2 Tbs jalapeno olive oil (I used [add link])
• 2 Tbs aged white balsamic vinegar
• 1 Tbs fresh orange juice (can swap with coconut milk for a little different flavor- still delicious!)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Mix all of that together and enjoy a healthy and really refreshing salad! I like to add the finely chopped red onions into the dressing at the bottom of the bowl first before adding the rest of the ingredients. I feel like it helps with saturating the flavor and just makes it taste better! That may be all in my head but whatever I still do it!

The biggest pain for this recipe is cutting the watermelon, everything else is is really easy and simple, but I STRUGGLE with cutting the watermelon! I always get a little nervous when I cut it, mainly because when I was probably in middle school I really wanted some watermelon after school so I decided to cut it myself and it was a bit of a disaster!

The knife got stuck halfway in the watermelon, so I thought it would be smart to try and lift the watermelon up with the knife so I could slam it back down and get the knife all the way through. Well… not too surprisingly, when I lifted up the knife, right before I was going to slam it back down, the watermelon fell off and I smoked myself in the head, luckily it was the blunt end and now luckily, all I have is an itty-bitty scar by my eyebrow but ya.. it was not a pretty sight. So please, use the right knife and be careful folks.

Health benefits

I like adding all the health benefits and science behind why someone should eat this watermelon feta salad. For people like me that enjoy science and the ins and outs of all the compounds and nutritional benefits of each ingredient, this section is for you. If all you want to know is that it tastes good and is healthy/beneficial for keeping a good body composition that’s great too!

All the ingredients work together to help you get everything that you need to feel the best you can. Fats in the feta cheese and the olive oil make sure that you are getting and absorbing all of the micronutrients that are in the salad, vitamins A, D, E, and K are fat-soluble, which means they need to be eaten with fat to get absorbed into the body.) Plus all the different phytonutrients help to make sure that the different vitamins are minerals are more co-absorbent.

Watermelon

This salad is really good for a lot of different reasons, besides tasting amazing, it has a lot of health benefits and is really nutrient-dense. Watermelon has a lot of benefits including being high in water and fiber (WATER-melon) which really helps with digestion, keeps you hydrated, and lowers cholesterol. Watermelon also has properties that help reduce inflammation and bacteria that can cause illness (research) This helps to keep you healthy and moving without pain, no one likes waking up in the morning or living their life with still joints and pain. Reducing inflammation can also help with looking leaner, it takes a lot of the fluff that inflammation causes away. Watermelon has also been shown to help with weight management (research) It helps with keeping a better body composition, it decreased weight and body fat without also decreasing lean mass. Keeping muscle and losing fat is the goal!

Arugula

Arugula is high in different vitamins and minerals, Vitamins A, C, K, Calcium, Potassium, and Folate. Its biggest health property is in preventing cancer and DNA damage, along with other cruciferous vegetables (research). DNA damage can cause loss of brain function, increased biological aging (possible earlier death,) and other non-hereditary diseases (diseases that weren’t passed down from parents.)

Dressing

The dressing provides healthy fats from the olive oil as well as other compounds that help reduce cancer, studies have also found that vinegar has been shown to help with weight management, inflammation, and blood glucose (blood sugar) control. All of these add up to a leaner body, healthier cells, and a better functioning body so you can do all the things you want to do! Climb mountains, run, jump, sprint lift things, or just hang around looking good!

Go enjoy the salad and reap all the benefits!