Cleopatra at the salad bar

I've been working through my salad repertoire because my "salad days" are evenings when it is too hot to cook in my west-facing kitchen, so basically May to October.  Next up will be Fritzi's ravioli salad. I've already done 

• cole slaw
• shrimp Caesar salad
• three bean church basement potluck salad
• taco salad with broiled steak
• mustard potato salad
• deviled eggs
• tuna salad with green olives
• radish salad with tzatziki dressing

If I get to molded Jello salad just shoot me. When I was working in the hospital kitchen back in my other youthful and unexperienced "salad days" I got to assist the Jello-maker once or twice. The mixing bowl was the size of a Little Turtle swimming pool. Takes a whole lotta mini-marshmallows or canned mandarin orange sections to swim there!

My attempt at salata bil adas wa jazar, or Palestinian lentil carrot salad started out spicy and refreshing with lemon juice and cumin. The concoction keeps refilling the Tupperware no matter how much I eat, like a magic porridge pot. It was tasty, but please make it go away! And all because I had to buy carrots with greens attached to show preschoolers that carrots actually GROW IN DIRT. Crazy concept! 

Bonus summer salad explorations, boys and girls:

1. Salad
2. Caesar
3. Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra, 1606
4. Hives--As a kid I had a really bad case of hives after eating Grandma's tangy cukes and onions salad. It might have been caused by a spider bite. My face swelled out swallow my nose. 
5. Was the salad bar invented in Stevens Point, Wisconsin?
6. Sneeze guard history
7. Green in judgement, cold in blood
8. Don't make me spell vinagrette viniagarette vinegaret *
9. Veni vidi vici is not a pasta salad 
10. Where does the salad fork go? Remember fork and left have four letters, but knife, spoon, and right have five.
11. What was that tomato soup dressing we made in Campfire Girls, Janice?
12. Helen Corbitt's Neiman Marcus chicken salad
13. Maybe Mary will send me her quinoa salad recipe if I hint, hint...
14. Can you survive on boiled water lily roots? I'm reading a Wilbur Smith novel about the siege of Khartoum during the Mahdist War. South Sudanese still survive food crises by eating water lilies.
15. But what I'd really like is a fresh spinach salad with sliced radishes and cucumbers, quartered strawberries, dried cranberries, sliced almonds, watermelon cubes, feta crumbles, grilled salmon, squeezed fresh lemon juice, and balsamic dressing garnished with bacon crumbles.

*vinaigrette (n.) 

1690s, a type of condiment, from French vinaigrette (14c.), diminutive of vinaigre "(aromatic) vinegar" (see vinegar). Use in reference to a type of dressing for salads or cold vegetables is attested from 1877. From 1811 as "small box or bottle for carrying aromatic vinegar."

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder