After an exhausting hike, this salad recipe — courtesy of my good friend’s mom — is a great remedy for revival. It’s light and fresh, but it still fills you up.

If you’re going hiking in Tucson in the thick, scorching heat of the summer, consider giving Seven Falls in Bear Canyon a try. It’s about an 8-mile hike round trip, and the journey along the way is full of trickling streams with stepping stones and several shaded tree arches. The prize for putting your body through all of that huffing and puffing: running waterfalls and pools of crisp, cold water at the end of the trail.

With that being said, after a long hike (or if you’re just feeling like a quick, healthy summer snack) it’s nice to have a satisfying meal that’s also good for you, and this salad is pretty much packed with nutrients.

Here’s what you’ll need:

2 cups fresh watercress, washed
½ avocado, diced
1 fennel bulb, grated
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Juice from one lemon
1 tsp sea salt
8-10 Spanish olives (optional)
Fresh ground pepper (as much as you want)

Combine all of the ingredients together in a large bowl and toss the salad with two serving spoons. If you have never worked with watercress before, cut the stems off about half way up and throw those out. Then cut the rest of your watercress several times to create more bite-sized pieces (the stems connecting all of the leaves are perfectly fine to eat). Subsequently, with fennel, take the white, bulbous part and shave over a grater. Easy!

Now just fetch yourself a tall glass of ice-cold lemonade, relax into a comfortable chair, turn on a random episode of “How I Met Your Mother” and enjoy.

For more information on Seven Falls, go to: http://arizona.sierraclub.org/trail_guide/hike8.htm