It seems to happen that shortly after candles and chrysanthemums disappear from shopping shelves, they begin to be full of Christmas trees, Christmas baubles and Santas. Every year this process starts earlier. In my opinion, merchants try to make us believe that if there are only two months until Christmas, you need to hurry up. Maybe we should bake ginger bread and buy carp already?

For sure you have dishes on your home menu which are on the table only for special occasions. In my home this dish, among others, is vegetable salad. I don't know why I prepare it so rarely; mainly just for Christmas. The ingredients are simple, available all year around and preparation is not really complicated. In my family's opinion, vegetable salad is the queen among all salads. It doesn't have a spectacular appearance, unique recipe or secret ingredients, yet I don't know anybody who doesn't like it.

Everybody knows the ingredients. The secret of every housewife is proportions which mean that the net result is sweet, spicy or dry. My salad is rather sweet and made a little more spicy by adding mustard.

Ingredients:

4 carrots

3 parsley roots

1 tin of peas

8 dill pickles

I had my guard up. I didn't want it, but it was sitting on a market stall, tempting me. Beautiful, big, with intensively orange pulp – a pumpkin. It enticed me once again, even though I have used a lot of them this year. Fortunately, the best season for pumpkins is in October and November, so we will have a chance to miss them until they come back again next year.

I have made soups and pancakes with pumpkins, and this time I decided to make a pumpkin salad. Preparing this dish is extremely simple and lasts as long as it takes to bake the pumpkin. If you plan on preparing this salad, you should bake the pumpkin earlier. The pumpkin should cool down before you mix it with the rest of the ingredients. It is up to you how you serve this dish. It is essentially a salad but I served it on toast.

The inspiration for this pumpkin salad was taken from a cookery book by Mlekowita.

Ingredients:

Salad

0.5kg of pumpkin

1 red pepper

1 tablespoon of dried thyme

200g of feta cheese

100g of butter

1 tablespoon of light wine vinegar

2 tablespoons of olive oil

salt and pepper

some leaves of fresh basil

I have nice and warm associations of fresh figs with holidays in Croatia. Every morning my husband would wander to the bakery for bread, visiting on the way home market stands with beautiful, ripe fruits. I haven't eaten watermelons like they have there in a long time. They were intensely red, sweet and so juicy that we almost couldn't slice them. Heavily chilled in the fridge, they gave us relief on hot days.

Now whenever I encounter fresh figs I buy some of the ripest ones. They aren't so beautiful as the ones in Croatia but they still usually disappear before I can work out what to do with them. This time I saved two figs and added them to a salad.

Ingredients:

mixed lettuce

2 fresh figs

a handful of walnuts

In my grandma's house supper was a must. If dinner was especially hearty or was served too late, when asked whether she wanted supper my grandmother replied, "Yes, but letką" (it means "light" supper, not too much and not too heavy). It is one of the warm "pictures" I have to remember my grandma.

Today's recipe is for letką supper – layered salad with tomatoes. It is worth making this in the summer when tomatoes smell like tomatoes and have a beautiful ripe colour.

Ingredients:

2 tomatoes

1 egg

handful of minced chives

a couple of leaves of rocket

Holidays have one basic property: they show how much time modern school takes up. when I think about all the learning, projects and presentations my daughter has to do and which absorb my private time as well, my freshly dyed hair bristles. Half of the holiday has gone and I haven't relaxed yet. I relish my free afternoons and enjoy dinners at my leisure.

Today's proposal is for a simple but delicious salad with green beans and smoked salmon. If you don't like the robust taste of garlic, you can omit it or add less.

Ingredients:

250g of green beans

100g of smoked salmon