My family always asks me to bring lettuce salad to events, because I am apparently talented when it comes to lettuce.  I’m not talented at all.  There’s a secret combination of ingredients that, when combined, mean you have an awesome salad.  They are:  fruit, cheese and nuts/seeds.  You add any combination of the three to some lettuce, toss with a simple vinaigrette, and voila.

Here are some combo ideas that I’ve tried and liked:

1. Blue cheese, toasted walnuts, sliced pears

2. Blue cheese, toasted almonds, mandarin oranges (and reserve a little of the canned juice to make the vinaigrette)

3. Dried or fresh apricots, goat cheese, pecans

4. Dried pineapple, brie, cashews

5. Strawberries, brie, and walnuts

6. Raisins, swiss cheese, sunflower seeds

I usually just use a very simple red wine vinaigrette.  And when I’m making a salad at home, I use whatever we have on hand.  Often this ends up being raisins.

It’s lettuce season!  YAY!  It’s also radish season.  Going to post a new recipe of Adam’s later on today — fresh radish salsa.

Giving credit where credit is due: a few of the combo ideas above can be found in Bittman’s How To Cook Everything Vegetarian (page. 40: 10 Good Fruit, Cheese and Nut combinations).  I can’t recommend that cookbook enough.  Any vegetable that you’ve got on hand, you can find a recipe for it in there.   This cookbook is appropriate for any household, not just vegetarian ones.  If we are going to have meat with a meal, we simply add it in to one of the recipes there or have our meat as a side dish.