Spring salad EXPLOSION!

Every week, I buy a head of romaine from the nice people at the farmers market who sell it for $1 a head. Last week, as I was leaving, I happened to also come across a free bag of baby spring mix. This week, I happened to hit the market just as they were closing. There was no more romaine, but I bought some enticing red leaf lettuce and some spinach, and the $1 a head people were packing up and trying to get rid of their greens, so they gave me some arugula as well. That's when I decided that someone was trying to tell me something about eating greens.

I still have some of the spring mix, so I'm now up to four different kinds of greens. Even if I save all the spinach for cooking (saute it with olive oil and lots of garlic and maybe some chopped red bell pepper and you will never want to eat it another way ever again), that's still so much salad! Boyfriend will eat some, but we're only human. And this means we're on the lookout for good salad recipes.

I might as well confess: I'm a salad dressing philistine. Most of the highfalutin' food writing I've read suggests that foodies love vinaigrette, but despite several years of trying, I still can't stand sharp, vinegary dressings. I especially hate the ones that are sweet (why pour corn syrup all over a perfectly good meal?), but even balsamic gets the thumbs-down. I think I was spoiled by growing up with a lemon tree; in my house, salad dressing meant me or my brother would go outside, pick a lemon and juice it into one of those commercial dressing mixes with the cruets. Fresh lemon juice is divine. Vinegar tastes, well, sour to me.

By contrast, creamy dressings are... a bit gauche. In my unlamented career as a waitress, I served hundreds of people under the age of 25, and almost all of them wanted ranch dressing on the side of their fries. And their onion rings. And their other fried stuff. And their pizza and baked potatoes. It is tasty, but not what I would call a classy habit, guys. Plus the stuff is insanely high in fat.

In the privacy of my own home, I can live with the trashiness, but not with the fat content. So I have started to develop my own dressings. Sure, they still have some fat, but at least they taste good. And they're not full of frankenfood. One is a Weight Watchers special:

1. Take however much goat cheese or other soft, strong-flavored cheese you can afford points-wise.


2. Throw it in the blender with lemon juice or a tomato or salsa (or, yes, even some balsamic vinegar).


3. Toss.

And the other is an attempt to imitate all those restaurant taco salads, but without trans fats:

1. Throw half an avocado in the blender.


2. Add enough salsa and/or lemon juice to thin it out to the right consistency and blend.


3. Toss.

While I'm at it, here's the fake taco salad recipe:

Chop a few handfuls of WASHED lettuce, preferably a nice fresh crispy one. Also chop half a tomato, some green onions and whatever else you think would taste nice. Put them in a large, sealable container.

Get some canned black beans and some frozen corn and put them in a colander. Rinse very well under a hot tap until beans are free of the canned bean goo and the corn isn't frozen anymore. Drain those well and add them to the large, sealable container.

Put the dressing in with the other stuff. Add salsa if you didn't already. Put the lid on tightly (very important) and shake the motherfucker until you think the dressing is probably well-distributed.

Open and do some stirring just to make sure. You're ready to eat, but if you want, nice additions to the top include crumbled baked corn chips, some shredded half-fat cheddar and fake chicken. (Or real chicken if that's what you do.)

Serve with fresh corn tortillas if you can get 'em.