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What's your house salad?


Ali in OR
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Do you have a particular salad that is your go-to salad? Not necessarily some amazing creation, just one that you serve often because you like it, it's easy, and you usually have all the ingredients?

I would say our house salad is Caesar salad--romaine lettuce, freshly grated parmesan, Costco's focaccia croutons, and a homemade caesar dressing I keep on hand. Growing up our house salad was iceberg lettuce, cucumber, tomato, croutons, and Good Seasons Italian dressing mixed in their cruet. What's yours?

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It is very boring.  Romaine lettuce, cherry tomatoes, sunflower seeds, oran-raisins, and sprinklings of wheat germ & parmesan.  Pretty much every.single.night LOL

ETA - My mother always served our salad with the dressing already mixed with the greens.  Either French or a creamy Italian or green-goddess (does anyone remember that?).  I yearned for ranch or regular italian.  When we married, DH did not want the dressing mixed in.  So, the ugly bottles go on the table.  I have never gotten over that!

Edited by Familia
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Usually baby lettuce, cucumber, carrot and colored bell peppers. Three of us don’t like dressing, but I always have raspberrry walnut vinaigrette and ranch on hand for me and Dd. Sometimes its power greens mix with walnuts and craisins and feta. 

Growing up there was always salad, but never the same thing every time. 

Edited by SamanthaCarter
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this is a very sore subjet in my household.

 DH has a very particular salad. It is so particular in fact that I cannot ever get it right. As he grows the lettuce he thinks he has the say on how they are prepared. Well after 25 years of getting it wrong 4 times a week ( and being cross examined and loudly told why I can never get it right and shown and told) I have gone on strike. I am not making salad any more. He now makes it himself ( for breakfast??) and eats it . If there are some leftovers then I serve it up at tea time (dinner)

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I think salad is somewhat personal.   So, I'd never serve one salad to a group.  But my go-to salad lately is a taco salad without the chips.   I do 1/4 lb portions of taco meat, heat that up with Salsa, then pour on top of half a bag of butter lettuce and add a little ranch.   I used to add shredded cheese, and I love cheese, but it was extraneous.  

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Ours is a mix of available lettuce and whatever fresh vegetables look good - sliced or baby carrots, baby marrows (zucchini), baby corn, tomatoes, cucumber, cauliflower, sugarsnap peas, etc.  When in season, I usually add strawberries.  We top with cheese - usually feta.  Sauces on the side.

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I don't like salads that much, but if I do make one, I generally chop up some greens, add a cucumber and tomato and onions, plus sunflower seeds if I have them, and a simple homemade olive oil and vinegar dressing.  (Sometimes with a squirt of lemon.)

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Romaine lettuce with a quick homemade vinaigrette whisked up in the bottom of the bowl.

Or bagged mesclun mix, ditto.

When we want to get fancy we add bell pepper strips, carrot chunks, sliced scallions, and maybe celery to the romaine.  Sometimes tiny cherry tomatoes.  

When we want to get REALLY fancy I make the Chez Paniesse Roquefort dressing—wow is that good.  

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Lettuce--whatever's on hand (I switch around), green/red bell peppers, banana peppers, black olives. Those are the staples. I add cukes, carrots, mushrooms and/or tomatoes if I have them. A drizzle of dressing or salsa. If it's a main dish then I usually add some beans, or sometimes chicken or tuna.

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Since everyone has a particular thing they won’t eat in a salad, I stopped making one salad to serve the group and just cut up the ingredients and have a salad bar. Usually, there’s two kinds of lettuce and spinach to choose from, and then cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, artichokes, Kalamata olives, sometimes roasted beets, and then cheeses such as cheddar, Parmesan, and feta. Everyone gets their favorite salad.

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DH eats at least 2 salads every day: 

1. "Breakfast" salad -- spring mix, cucumber, blueberries, roast turkey, dressed with olive oil and fresh lemon juice

2. "Lunch" salad (or bedtime snack) -- spring mix, cucumber, avocado, pickled red onions (pickled with ACV and honey), roasted salted pumpkin seeds, roast turkey, dressed with olive oil and fresh lemon juice

My salads usually involve arugula and quinoa (I make large batches and freeze in small containers), bottled dressing, pumpkin seeds, other protein, something orange (eg, carrots, butternut squash). I aim for a Pret a Manger vibe with my combos.

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The essentials are chopped baby spinach, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Frequent additions are carrots and chickpeas; chopped red onion, shredded cheese, sliced hard-boiled eggs, dried cranberries, and chopped pecans are often on the table for people to add as they like.

Dressing is only for company--we like our salad better plain.

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Our house salad is power mix (baby spinach and kale), sliced on the bias grape tomatoes, chunks of cucumbers, sweet peppers, and avocado, salt, garlic powder, balsamic vinegar, EVOO, TJ's unsalted roasted slivered almonds.  Feta if we are eating diary/vegetarian.

My other salad that I do make regularly in the winter is the power mix, tomatoes, thinly sliced Granny Smith apples, roasted sweet potatoes (with olive oil, salt, and Frontier brand berberre spice mix) , salt, honey, dijon mustard, rice vinegar, garlic powder, pepper, sugared pecans.

I love a good Caesar, but I never make it at home.  Now I want a Caesar salad.

Edited by YaelAldrich
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My go to is green leaf lettuce - and I'm super fussy about it. Green Mountain Harvest lettuce. Then I typically add crumbled feta and sunflower seeds and toss with a homemade maple/mustard vinaigrette. Scallions if I have them too. In the summer, I like adding garden tomatoes and will eat w/ cottage cheese for a meal. 

Screen Shot 2019-01-10 at 11.59.16 AM.png

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Romaine lettuce, cucumber, mushrooms, avocado, tomato and homemade ranch dressing. Sometimes I use Good Seasons Italian dressing, but i’m Not fond of tangy vinegar dressings. Sometimes I’ll throw on some feta cheese, too, if I have it on hand. Sometimes i’ll Cut up an apple, too. Or pear.

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Chopped Middle Eastern salad--whatever veggies we have on hand from this list: romaine, tomatoes, cucumber, red bell peppers, carrots, avocado, shredded cabbage, red or sweet onion and cilantro tossed with lemon, good olive oil and salt. 

I like Cindy's Kitchen Caesar, Ranch or Sundried Tomato Balsamic Vinaigrette on my lunchtime salads, but the above is what everyone likes for dinner.

Fun thread!

Amy

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Mine is the same as DH's grandmother's, as she taught me to cook.

The way she did it was green leaf lettuce, tomatoes, green onions, feta, kalamata olives.  If she had avocado, or leftover vegetables like steamed broccoli or green beans, those would go in too.  Dressing was homemade: balsamic, olive oil, a bit of garlic, dijon mustard.  You can sub red bell peppers for the tomatoes.

The only absolutely mandatory parts are the lettuce, green onions, and dressing.  Everything else is just whether you have it on hand or not.  We don't eat dairy and nightshades come and go, so often it is just lettuce, dressing, onions.  She served it with every meal.

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These all sound  yummy!

Our family house salad is romaine/iceberg mix, cucumbers, grape tomatoes, croutons, and dressing on the side. I add carrots if we have them. 

My favorite (just for me) regular salad is spinach, feta, walnuts, fresh strawberries OR dried cranberries with balsamic vinaigrette. 

I also love to throw roasted veggies (cold) on my salads (sweet potato chunks, Brussels sprouts, broccoli are my favorite). 

My summertime favorite is grilled salmon (cold, chunks), romaine lettuce, red bell pepper, and balsamic vinaigrette. Yum!

Edited by mmasc
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11 hours ago, scholastica said:

Since everyone has a particular thing they won’t eat in a salad, I stopped making one salad to serve the group and just cut up the ingredients and have a salad bar. Usually, there’s two kinds of lettuce and spinach to choose from, and then cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, artichokes, Kalamata olives, sometimes roasted beets, and then cheeses such as cheddar, Parmesan, and feta. Everyone gets their favorite salad.

This is basically what we do.  I mix the basic lettuce, cucumber and capsicum and sometimes celery or carrot but toppings are on the side to add as you like, as are avocado and tomato.  The only thing everyone like is walnut, apple and celery - Waldorf style but even then they don’t all like dressing so it’s made plain with dressing as an option.

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On 1/9/2019 at 10:25 PM, wathe said:

Super simple:  Lettuce and homemade oil and vinegar dressing (olive oil, salt, pepper, a squirt of mustard and either wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar).  Delicious.

In the past few years, I've begun making salad dressing too. It's easy (and cheap!)  and so much better than store bought.

This has been our favorite for several months. I first made it when we had company, and everyone absolutely raved about it. It's quite tart. And our Walmarts have the 5 oz tubs of organic spring mix for $2, can't beat that. 

  • 8 T. safflower or canola or other oil
  • 2 T. white wine vinegar
  • 1 T. Dijon mustard
  • 1/2 t. salt
  • 1/2 t. pepper
  • 1 t. lemon juice
  • 2 cloves fresh garlic, finely chopped

 

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My "house salad" is whatever bagged mix is cheap and has a far off expiration date that week. ☺ topped occasionally with croutons and cheese. We have a few bottled dressings, everyone just picks what they want. I like the idea of fancier salads but if I buy a head of lettuce it goes to waste. This way we actually eat salad with many meals.

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I’m not sure I ever do the same salad twice. For bagged lately, Dh and I are preferring those crunchy kale/cabbage salads. In general, I use spinach more than lettuce because it’s just a more versatile ingredient to keep in the fridge. My salads very often involve bits of veggies that didn’t get used up in other ingredients. I don’t dress them because my ‘kids’ (18 and 21) prefer no dressing. Dh is partial to bleu cheese and I like everything but blue cheese. 

I was REALLY into chopped salads this summer when my garden was producing. I can’t seem to grow lettuce, so I did a lot of the Israeli-style salads with lots of cubes. I experimented with panzinella (so?) when the tomatoes were awesome and I could LIVE off that. 

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My personal fave, never, ever get tired of it:  

Green and red leaf lettuce (butter lettuce? very mild in flavor)

red onion slices

roasted pecans

Something sweet- chopped apple, pear, dried cranberries, raisins, halved grapes...  

Balsamic vinaigrette, homemade

 

And the other that I serve quite often:

Same lettuce as above, or baby romaine

Peeled, cored, cubed cucumber

Corn kernels from a can

Sometimes cooked, cubed beets, if I have them

Non balsamic vinaigrette, homemade.  

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On 1/10/2019 at 6:01 PM, AmandaVT said:

My go to is green leaf lettuce - and I'm super fussy about it. Green Mountain Harvest lettuce. Then I typically add crumbled feta and sunflower seeds and toss with a homemade maple/mustard vinaigrette. Scallions if I have them too. In the summer, I like adding garden tomatoes and will eat w/ cottage cheese for a meal. 

Screen Shot 2019-01-10 at 11.59.16 AM.png

 

Yes!  I use batavia lettuce, I wasn't sure if Americans would recognize the name.  We can get it in all green or green with purple edges varieties, and it's what changed me from salad "meh" to salad most days of the year person.  

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On 1/10/2019 at 12:01 PM, AmandaVT said:

My go to is green leaf lettuce - and I'm super fussy about it. Green Mountain Harvest lettuce. Then I typically add crumbled feta and sunflower seeds and toss with a homemade maple/mustard vinaigrette. Scallions if I have them too. In the summer, I like adding garden tomatoes and will eat w/ cottage cheese for a meal. 

Screen Shot 2019-01-10 at 11.59.16 AM.png

Batavian (summer crisp, French crisp) is the BEST! I love growing and eating it. You are very fortunate to have it available from a local source year round!

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Individualized salads over here, with a spring mix/spinach base.

Mine usually gets some red grapes, feta cheese, walnuts, and raspberry vinegrette.  My 8yo's usually gets tomatoes, cukes, avocado, and a gallon of ranch dressing. But he'll independently decide to have salad as a snack, so whatever!

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We have three that everybody loves and I rotate.

1) Caesar salad. I buy the giant kit at a warehouse store that lasts for two days.

2) Egyptian chopped salad...always start by putting a few chopped onions (white, green, red) in a bowl, with salt/pepper and a splash of vinegar....then add in finely chopped cucumber, tomatoes, romaine, and parsley (optional).  Toss with a vinaigrette.  Can add in toasted pita cubes to turn it into fattoush.

3) Greek salad...onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, romaine, feta, kalamata olives.

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I'm guessing you mean side salads and not main dish salads. I don't really have a house salad. It depends on what I have on hand and how much I feel like cutting, dicing,  or chopping ingredients. Sometimes it's just lettuce. Other times it will have one or more of the following: tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, sweet or green onions, bell pepper (any color), craisins, or nuts. Rarely do we have cheese on our salad. Lettuce might be butter lettuce, romaine, romaine hearts, or spring mix. It just depends what I was in the mood for when I was shopping as well as what might have been on sale.

My favorite "dressing" is olive oil, kosher salt, and a few squeezes of fresh lemon. I also like a variety of homemade vinaigrettes. Dh prefers creamy dressings though I've been fairly successful at getting him away from less healthy dressings. He also likes raspberry vinaigrette. Ds doesn't like lettuce so he doesn't eat salad. He will occasionally eat a spinach or kale salad.

Growing up the lettuce was always iceberg though in my mom's later years she did switch to more leafy lettuces. She said iceberg was all she knew and it was what everybody used back in the day. Dressing was always olive oil and vinegar with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and dried oregano. It was always served already mixed. All of our relatives did the same thing so for many years it was all I knew. I was a teenager before I knew that not everyone does that. I was having dinner at a friend's house and her mother put out salad without dressing and several bottles of different store bought dressings. 

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You guys are awesome! I often avoided having salad with dinner because I somehow was convinced that everyone else puts a zillion veggies in their salad, and that if I only had a few things it wasn't a "real" salad. Hearing that some JUST have greens is life changing!!!! Yes, this is yet another place I've let perfect be the enemy of the good, lol. 

Currently having a salad of spring mix, blueberries, walnuts, honey roasted peanuts, goat cheese, and a bit of crispy garlic (from a bag). And light ranch, although yesterday I did the same salad with olive oil, salt, pepper, and balsamic and that was good too. 

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Sort of on (yet off) the topic...do most of you use bagged mixes or fresh greens? Follow-up (and the real point of my question!) do you use and LOVE a salad spinner? I want to get one so bad, but I just hate adding another thing to my kitchen! Is it worth it?!

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11 minutes ago, mmasc said:

Sort of on (yet off) the topic...do most of you use bagged mixes or fresh greens? Follow-up (and the real point of my question!) do you use and LOVE a salad spinner? I want to get one so bad, but I just hate adding another thing to my kitchen! Is it worth it?!

 

I have a hard time with bagged greens. I get very squicky if lettuce has anything that looks like wilty bits or sliminess on it. I love my salad spinner - when our big one broke, I got a smaller one that's perfect for 1 head of lettuce. If I add spinach or darker greens, I'll get a box of power greens, from I think Olivia's. It has baby spinach and baby kale in it and it doesn't get gross quickly.

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On 1/10/2019 at 1:31 AM, Carol in Cal. said:

Romaine lettuce with a quick homemade vinaigrette whisked up in the bottom of the bowl.

Or bagged mesclun mix, ditto.

When we want to get fancy we add bell pepper strips, carrot chunks, sliced scallions, and maybe celery to the romaine.  Sometimes tiny cherry tomatoes.  

When we want to get REALLY fancy I make the Chez Paniesse Roquefort dressing—wow is that good.  

I mix the dressing in the bottom of the bowl too.  I learned how to make a "salade verte" this way when I was teen on exchange in France.   We ate greens with a simple oil, vinegar, salt and mustard dressing made in the bottom of the wooden bowl with every evening meal.  I was very impressed: before this I had no idea that there was such a thing as salad dressing you could make yourself.  I had grown up on orange "French" dressing from a bottle and iceberg lettuce (and million other processed convenience food products from boxes, bottles and cans- Hampburger Helper, Kraft Dinner, casseroles based on canned soup and frozen cubed vegetables).  Living with a French family for a few months in in the 1980's provided me with a very valuable food education.

Edited by wathe
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35 minutes ago, mmasc said:

Sort of on (yet off) the topic...do most of you use bagged mixes or fresh greens? Follow-up (and the real point of my question!) do you use and LOVE a salad spinner? I want to get one so bad, but I just hate adding another thing to my kitchen! Is it worth it?!

I use both.

When I buy bagged greens, I am extremely picky about inspecting them through the bag while I’m still at the store.  I want them to look really fresh so that they will last a few days.

When I buy unbagged ones, I do use a salad spinner.  I LOVE my Pampered Chef one—it is super fast, very thorough, and when I got it there were quite a few ‘extras’ available (i’m not sure whether that is still true or not.).  It comes with two sizes of insert, and the small one is designated for berries—it’s nice and gentle but it still works.  I also have the snap on lid and the freezer insert.  It’s wonderful.  Pro tip—once you’ve spun your greens once, take the basket out and dump out the water clinging to the sides of the bowl, wait a little bit, fluff up the greens, and then spin them again.  You want them very dry, and this makes that happen.  That way the salad dressing sticks better and is undiluted by water so it tastes better, too.

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