Make this refreshing bean and corn salad for summer celebrations

For July Fourth, I’m making a bean and corn salad using frozen, organic sweet corn just in case fresh corn is unavailable.

Why organic?

It is hard to believe that fresh, sweet corn can be GMO (genetically modified organism).

Before it gets too complicated, almost all (nearly 100%) field corn (not fresh) grown in the U.S. is GMO.

There’s no way for me to tell if nonorganic fresh corn, which can be GMO, is GMO corn. Since organic corn cannot legally be GMO, I head for organic to play it safe.

My new bean and corn salad started with a Wegmans (an East Coast-based supermarket chain) recipe from their website. The picture of the finished salad got me.

Getting the salad’s ingredients was easy since I already had them in my fridge and pantry.

The Wegmans recipe calls for a bean popular mainly in the South: black-eyed peas. Lucky me, I had a can of black-eyed peas in my pantry.

Wegmans also uses black beans in their salad. Black beans are a favorite since they are a nutritional blockbuster.

Wegmans uses avocado oil in their salad dressing. Knowing that most people don’t have that available in their pantry and knowing that organic avocado oil is very pricey, I switched to olive oil since I like the flavor of extra virgin olive oil, especially if it’s organic. Wegmans’ recipe calls for a ½ cup of oil, but I reduced that to ¼ cup.

For heat, Wegmans adds two jalapeño peppers. Lately, I have found it hard to know how much heat a fresh jalapeño pepper would produce since some yielded almost no heat, while others set my tongue aflame. So, no jalapeño peppers here. Instead, I used a ½ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper.

Finally, Wegmans adds ¼ cup of sugar to their dressing to sweeten the cider vinegar. Since I avoid sugar as much as possible, I used organic stevia to sweeten the dressing equal to the sugar, which turned out to be six packets.

The Wegmans salad also contains sweet red pepper, celery and sweet onion; all good for me.

I used my microwave to just barely warm the frozen sweet corn. As that warmed, I stirred the dressing together in a large mixing bowl. Next, I got busy dicing the onion, red pepper and celery. Then I added the drained beans and chopped veggies to the bowl, stirred them, and folded everything until mixed well and coated with dressing.

My first taste said it was too sweet. However, once it was well-chilled, it was perfect.

I plan on making my bean and corn salad again the night of July 3 so the flavors will peak and balance on July Fourth.

Give it a try.

• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at 1leanwizard@gmail.com.

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Don’s Celebration Bean and Corn Salad

¼ cup organic apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon kosher salt

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

6 packets organic stevia (equal to ¼ cup granulated sugar)

¼ cup organic extra virgin olive oil

1¼ cups frozen organic sweet corn kernels, defrosted

1 red sweet pepper (organic preferred), cored, seeded, diced

1 cup trimmed, diced organic celery

1 cup medium diced onion

1 can (15.5 ounce) no-salt-added organic black beans, well-drained

1 can (15.5 ounce) no-salt-added black-eyed peas, well-drained

To a large mixing bowl add the vinegar, salt, pepper and stevia and whisk until the salt and stevia dissolves. Add and whisk in the olive oil. Add the corn; stirring to combine. Add red pepper, celery, onion, black beans and black-eyed peas and, using a large rubber spatula, stir and fold until well combined. Cover and refrigerate for at least one hour or overnight.

Serves 10. Makes 2 quarts.

Nutrition values per serving: 160 calories (33% from fat), 5.8 g fat (0.7 g saturated fat), 20.2 g carbohydrates (15.9 net carbs), 3.3 g sugars, 4.2 g fiber, 4.9 g protein, 0 mg cholesterol, 358 mg sodium.

Suggestions: No black beans? Substitute canned and drained kidney beans or chickpeas.

1 or 2 tablespoons chopped, pickled jalapeño peppers will crank up the heat. Add an extra packet of stevia since pickled peppers bring along some vinegar.

Wegmans suggested frozen corn can be replaced with kernels from 2 ears of fresh corn. Blanch for 30 seconds and cool before use.

— Adapted by Don Mauer