No-Tuna Bread Salad

I could swear I've written about this recipe before but when I looked back I couldn't find it, so this may be a repeat. But it's a good recipe, so I'm posting it anyway.

So here's the story behind this recipe. I've cut back on the time I spend watching Food Network; watching chefs cook meat, which I don't eat anymore, isn't much fun. I have continued to record $10.00 Dinners with Melissa D'Arabian, however. She cooks meat but she also makes vegetarian side dishes that can be mains and desserts. Some of her meat dishes can also be converted to vegetarian, like her Tuna Bread Salad. When she made the recipe on her show it looked so quick, easy, and tasty that I had to try it. I left out the tuna, doubled the beans, and used a different dressing. (I'm not a fan of mustardy dressings.) It was a success; The Youngest, aka The Wild Child, was the only one who didn't like it. (He doesn't like anything so that's not a factor in determining what the rest of us eat.) The recipe also calls for Northern white beans but I'm going to try it with butter beans the next time I make it since the white beans are really small and don't hold up to the larger sizes of the other ingredients. I'm also going to change the shallots to green onions, which are easier to find at the grocery.

As for the dressing I used the Good Seasons Italian mix, the kind that comes dried in a little packet. Make that and pour it over the salad; it is tangy and has some bite but without the mustard flavor. Other than that, follow Melissa's recipe for a tasty meal. (I also made the carrot soup recipe from that episode as a side dish; I followed that recipe more closely but made a few changes recommended in the comments.)

Update:
We've decided to rename this recipe Butter Bean Bread Salad since we like the butter beans in it so well. We use 2 cans of butter beans and a can of some other kind of bean, usually cannellini, sometimes pinto, sometimes Great Northerns. Basically whatever we have in the pantry. The green onions are much better than the shallots, too. Also over load on the tomatoes and basil; they make it really yummy. We also like it with the Orange Scented Carrot Soup from the same episode. After reading some of the comments that follow the recipe, we add a couple of potatoes to the soup along with the carrots.