Greek Farmer's Salad: Horiatiki

This is a common salad with some regional variations in Greece, among which are: some add capers and some use red wine vinegar to dress the salad instead of lemon; often too, the olives are not always pitted and in some areas they peel the cucumber. I've had Greek salads in the U.S. and in Germany, and they had red or yellow bell peppers  and the cheese was crumbled over the salad.

Ingredients (about 6 good servings):

4 large ripe tomatoes, chopped
1 cucumber, I partially peeled the cucumber, making it sort of "striped," chopped
1 medium red onion, sliced into rings, then quarter the rings
1 medium green bell pepper, cut into about 1 inch strips
15 to 20 Kalamata olives, I used pitted olives
about 2 to 3 inch long by 2 inch wide by 1/2 inch thick slices of Feta cheese, per serving
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons fresh oregano leaves (pretty easily found in markets or supermarkets)
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano per serving
1 to 2 tablespoons drained capers
salt to taste, but remember the cheese, olives and capers have salt, so you may not need ANY salt
6 to 8 lemon wedges

Into a large bowl put the chopped tomato, the chopped cucumber, the red onion, the green pepper strips and the olives. Add the olive oil, the lemon juice the fresh oregano leaves, the capers and the salt (if using), mix together well. Place a small "block" of cheese on top of each serving and nestle a couple of lemon wedges into the side of each serving too. Sprinkle 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano over each serving. 

WORD HISTORY:
Brine-This word for salty water used for pickling; and thus, preserving some foods, has an unknown ancient history, although there have been attempts to connect it with forms in Indo European, but I'm not terribly convinced by these connections. Further, while "brine" has forms in Dutch (brijn) and Flemish (brijne),^ there seem to be no other connections in the Germanic languages. It is an old word, as Old English (Anglo-Saxon) had "bryne," but whether the word was taken along with the Anglo-Saxons from the Continent to Briton, or whether it was acquired after they established themselves in what became England is unclear. With the Germanic dialects that became Dutch/Flemish right across from Anglo-Saxon England, did one provide the word to the other? If so, there is still the question of where it came from originally. The spelling "brine" has been in English for hundreds of years. Of course too, the idea of sea water being salty gave the word the slang meaning for water from the sea.

^ Modern linguists classify Flemish as a dialect of Dutch, but in the past, Flemish was usually seen as a separate language, likely because Belgium and the Netherlands became separate countries, and before that, there was a "general" religious divide during the Reformation times, where Dutch was associated more with Protestantism and Flemish was associated with Catholicism. English, Dutch and Flemish are all close cousins.