Cool Curry Salad

My Beloved and I are hot weather wimps, having lived so long in the cool Bay area where spring temperatures are likely to hover around 65F; when the thermometer rises about 75F, we start to wilt. At 88+, we become melting puddles of whine.

Little did I know when I set out to use up some leftover brown rice from Massa Organics, that I would invent a great salad for a blistering hot Northern California day. I was just thinking of all the good, fresh veggies I'd like to add to the rice, never suspecting that the weather was going to turn from coolish to ovenish overnight.

I love curry flavor so I used that as the baseline, mixing curry powder with about a walnut of mayo and a blob of ricotta cheese I found at the back of the fridge (still good!). I added some lemon juice, as the mayo-ricotta was too bland and ended up adding a full juicy lemon's worth (make your curry sauce much more tart than you ultimately want, as the bland veggies will buffer it).

Then I chopped some celery, scallions, raw broccoli florets and added biggish chunks of ripe avocado and fresh English peas, and mixed those into the curried rice in about a 1-1 ratio of rice to veggies. Tasted it, and it was pretty good but it still lacked a little something so I thought to add raisins to get some sweet into the tart/savory blend, They were perfect, adding visual punch as well as a sweet note. I would have added bacon bits if I had had any. A little S&P and you're there.

The finished salad was delicious next to the cold chicken we had left over from the previous night's mint chicken and even good the second day, when the weather turned even hotter.

Would somebody please call the Fog Man and tell him we're ready for relief?