Watermelon and Feta Cheese Salad

Today we had a food tasting session at Slimming World, where everyone brings a different dish and we all get to try it and swap recipes. I normally like to bake a low-syn cake for food tastings but it was too hot to cook last night, so I decided to make a salad. I also had a large slice of watermelon I'd bought on a whim a few days before, so when I saw a recipe for watermelon and feta salad in the latest edition of Slimming World magazine I knew it would be a good thing to make.

You can adapt this as you like and add different things, but the idea is that it is a Greek-style salad. All you do is chop the ingredients and the dressing is just lemon juice. So here's what I used:

half a large slice of watermelon
2 large tomatoes
half a cucumber
1 green pepper
1 red onion
150g feta cheese
basil leaves
lemon juice

Chop the fruit and vegetables and toss in a bowl. Chop the feta into cubes and add to the salad. Sprinkle some basil leaves on top and squeeze a lemon and pour the juice over the top. This makes a lot of salad and would serve at least 4 people, or if you took this to a barbecue and everyone just had a few spoonfuls on their plate, it would serve a big crowd.

This is a lovely change from lettuce-based salads and a good reminder that you can use fruit in salads! It was also very cheap to make - I got a large slice of watermelon from Morrison's for £1 and used half of it in this recipe (costing 50p), the cucumber was 50p from Lidl and I used half (25p), the onion was from a large bag I already had at home and the basil was from the plant on my windowsill. The pepper was one of a pack of three from Lidl costing £1 (so 33p), I can't remember how much the tomatoes were but they couldn't have been more than 50p, and I forgot to buy a lemon so used bottled lemon juice that I already had at home. The feta was the most expensive part, costing £1.99. But I think overall for a cost of around £3.50 this is a big, bright, unusual salad, and would be a great dish to take to a picnic or barbecue (or a Slimming World food tasting!).

This month the ingredient to use for the One Ingredient Challenge is the cucumber, so I am sending this to Laura at How To Cook Good Food who is hosting the challenge this month. The challenge is hosted in alternative months by Nazima at Franglais Kitchen.

I'm also sending this to Four Seasons Food, hosted by Louisa at Chez Foti and Anneli at Delicieux, as their theme this month is barbecues and barbecue side dishes.

This is a relatively cheap salad to make and goes a long way so I am also sharing it with Credit Crunch Munch, hosted by Fish Fingers for Tea, on behalf of Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla at Fab Food 4 All.

I'm also sending this to the Cheese Please blog challenge, hosted by Fromage Homage, as the theme this month is feta.