Salads- variations on a theme

There is currently lettuce stashed in every available nook and cranny of our fridge, carefully tucked in to avoid crushing and bruising the delicate leaves. We'll be eating salad every night this week, but that's not unusual for us. The difference is that this week, and for perhaps a few weeks more, we'll be eating salads made with lettuce from our own garden and our CSA share.

Growing up, there was a salad on our dinner table every night. It was always eaten after the main dish, rather than before. Sliced cucumbers and diced avocado were served on the side, because my dad doesn't like cucumbers, and my sister and I hadn't yet learned to appreciate avocados. Today, I tend to feel that most (but not all) meals are incomplete unless they're accompanied by a green salad.

What goes into the bowl
Our typical weeknight salad includes the following: Lettuce, grape tomatoes, sliced cucumber, chopped scallion, diced avocado, a few kalamata olives, and croutons. These things are generally available year-round and make for a palate-pleasing salad, in my opinion.

Depending on what I've got in the fridge and what the main dish is, other ingredients might include: spinach, arugula, and other greens, peas, corn kernels, nuts, shredded or crumbled cheese, blanched broccoli florets, little cubes of tofu, zucchini, bell peppers (raw or roasted), grapes, apples, oranges, shredded carrots, red onion, pepperoncini, and at least several other items I'm forgetting to mention. The point is, any way you put it together, a salad is a great way to get your veggies in and round out the dinner plate.

A little tip for keeping potential salad ingredients handy and using up leftover veggie bits: Put a container in the fridge to be a catch-all for your veggie odds and ends. Half a bell pepper, a lemon wedge, a small hunk of leftover tofu or cheese, half an onion... whatever leftover veggies you create. Put 'em in the container, and when it's time to assemble your salad, pull out the container and get creative. This helps prevent finding those old lemon and onion halves that somehow work their way to the back of the fridge and get desiccated and nasty.

Dressing up the salad
I like to vary our salad dressings depending on my mood, and on the ingredients in the salad. Most often we have a vinaigrette of some sort. I prefer to make my own vinaigrette- it's easy and the variations are nearly limitless if you have a few different kinds of vinegar in the pantry, perhaps a few interesting oils, and some herbs on hand. My favorite is actually a tangy-sweet Maple-Balsamic Vinaigrette that I got from Eating Well magazine years ago, but I make plenty of other vinaigrettes as well.

I'm not above buying bottled salad dressing at all, but I don't tend to like most mainstream brands. Here are the three bottled dressings that I tend to choose over and over:

Goddess Dressing from Annie's Naturals, a tahini-based dressing with a unique flavor.

Sesame-Soy Vinaigrette from Trader Joe's, a flavorful fat-free dressing.

Creamy Caesar Parmigiano from Bolthouse Farms. This one is fairly new to me (I believe it's a new product line in general), but it really hits the spot when I want a creamy dressing. It's yogurt-based and has about 3g of fat per tablespoon- much less than in a full-fat creamy dressing. It doesn't taste low-fat, though! This one is in the refrigerator case in the produce department.

Just as my family did when I was growing up, we eat our salad after the main course. I put it on the table undressed and untossed, and when everyone's ready, we add the dressing and give it a good toss. Until recently, I served Ryan a "deconstructed" salad on his toddler plate, giving him diced tomato, sliced cucumbers and olives (he adores olives) with a little dressing to dip into. But lately, he's decided he wants real salad, and so now we serve him from the communal salad bowl at the end of the meal.

So, that's how we do salad at my house. I'd love to hear everyone else's salad tips and tricks!

Maple-Balsamic Vinaigrette