A side tailor made for summer barbecue season

Creamy Broccoli and Blue Cheese Salad is sophisticated, healthful — and kid friendly

Summer brings backyard barbecues, picnics and outdoor potlucks. We gather with friends or simply migrate to the backyard picnic table for family dinner, and that has me craving the classics: grilled meats, veggies and some creamy starchy sides such as macaroni salad. Today, I have the perfect solution for scratching the creamy-sidesalad itch while actually getting in some seriously healthy raw veg. Win-win.

Creamy Broccoli and Blue Cheese Salad stretches just a smidgen of silky-and-satisfying mayonnaise with some lowfat Greek yogurt, and the resulting salad is creamy but not cloying.

Blue cheese brings a nice sophisticated hit of flavor, and there is just enough to add complexity without being so overboard that kids won’t eat. Well, most, anyway: One of my four kiddos deemed this salad “too blue cheesy” for her palate, but I claim 75 percent as a victory here. Because a little blue cheese goes a long way, you get a lot of flavor for your cheese calorie, but feel free to swap for a milder cheese such as crumbled feta or even shredded sharp cheddar.

The bulk of the salad, though, is brilliantly healthful raw vegetables: broccoli, thinly sliced cabbage and shredded carrots. Halved grapes add the perfect touch of sweetness that takes the salad almost to a slaw and pairs perfectly with the tangy blue cheese and red onion.

You can spend 10 minutes breaking down your own florets, chopping cabbage and grating carrots or spend an extra dollar to buy them prepped in the produce aisle. Either way, the salad takes minutes to make, and it holds up well for a couple of days in the fridge. Which means leftovers can be brown-bagged for lunch the next day, no problem.

And, you can feel great about having a plethora of one of the most touted health foods out there: simple raw broccoli.