Despite living walking distance from Lake Michigan for my entire life, I rarely carve out a day just to be a beach bum because I’m not very good at sitting still. But with the long holiday weekend and beautiful weather in Chicago, I made it a point to put together a little beach foodie feast, throw on some SPF 100 and head to the lake to just relax.

Pretty much all of my summer salads have mayo in them – but I know mayo + hot summer sun don’t play nice together, so I threw this refreshing little salad together to take with us to the beach. Super simple, only a few ingredients, and delicious!

Ingredients
2 15 oz cans garbanzo beans
1 whole cucumber, skinned and chopped
1/4 cup minced red onion
2 tbs chopped fresh dill
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup virgin olive oil
Juice of 2 lemons
**Next time I make this I’m throwing in feta cheese too…mmmmmm.

Toss all ingredients together, put in a sand proof container, head to the beach – EAT!

Here is the rest of our beach spread – just some meats, cheeses, olives and caramelized pecans. YUM.

And perfect summer beer of course.

I think I could get used to this.