Kick up your salad a notch

Growing up, my parents served a garden salad with every dinner. It usually had lettuce, carrots, and miscellaneous other veggies. It was fine. Even good. But I got bored. I rebelled against the salad for many years after leaving home, focusing on other types of vegetable preparations. Recently, I’ve fallen in love with salad all over again. It started with a beautiful head of green leaf lettuce I bought at my local farm club. It tasted so fresh, crispy, and bright. Combined with fermented carrots and my homemade mix-and-match dressing, it was truly delicious. We planted a lot of greens in our garden this year, as well as in the Aerogarden. Now we have enough to harvest fresh garden salads a few times a week.
 
I came up with a list of ideas for making a scrumptious salad on the fly. Start with a head of fresh lettuce, spinach, or one of those super convenient salad mix bags. Then add in one or more from the list, and walla! Better than most salads you get in a restaurant.

1. Fermented carrots, fermented peppers, and/or soy ginger radishes - a few minutes spent making these, and you have gourmet salads for up to a year with minimal effort.
   
2. Fresh herbs- basil, parsley, cilantro, dill, shungiku, mitsuba. Whatever you have, it’s good in a salad.
3. Chopped onion- red onion, green onion, chives, or shallots
4. Seeds- poppy, sesame, sunflower, pepitas (all best toasted)
5. Dried fruit- raisins, cranberries, mulberries (preferably no sugar added)
6. Nuts- my favorites for salad are almonds or walnuts (toasted and a little chopped)
   
7. Hardboiled egg- for perfect boiled eggs, with no green ring and the center just set, follow these instructions: put eggs in pot and cover with one inch of cold water. Stir in one teaspoon of baking soda to make them easier to peel. Set on stove over high heat. Bring to a rolling boil. Remove from heat and let sit 10 minutes. Immediately transfer eggs to a bowl of ice water and cool 5 minutes. Peel.
   
8. Olives- green, black, Kalamata, whatever you like.
9. Homemade dressing- I always have on hand either mix & match herb dressing or this garlicky vinaigrette with lots of seeds. Top it off with a homemade dressing and everyone will be impressed.