When Do You Eat Salad ?

[Nyboy]

My family and everyone we knew all ways served the salad after dinner, it was suppose to help you digest the meal. It always contained iceberg lettuce, cucumber, and tomato always with oil and vinegar dressing. It was very strange when we ate out and salad was served before meal. As a adult who eats out often I still would rather have salad after the meal. When do you like your salad? What do you like in your salad?

 

[canesisters]

I seem to remember hearing somewhere that it was a very oriental thing to have salad after dinner... No wait.. I think that was soup after dinner..

My Mom used to make what she called salad casserole. She would dice up everything that would go into a 'regular' salad and mix it all together - Ranch dressing and all. Lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, eggs. cukes, mushrooms, sunflower seeds, squash, brocc, cauliflower, beets, carrots, ANYTHING.

 

[Nyboy]

Must be Italian everyone where I grew up ate it after meal

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Actually it's sort of pan-European. Most European's eat thier salad after dinner, as a palate cleanser before dessert/coffee

 

[Beekissed]

We have salad AS the meal. I rarely order a salad in a restaurant as they are so very bland and tasteless. At home we keep a salad mixture cut up of romaine lettuce, celery, broccoli, onions, green peppers, spinach, sugar snap peas and sometimes cauliflower. This is all cut up very fine so it can be eaten with a large spoon...yes...you read that right, we eat our salads with a spoon.

To that salad mix we add anything we want....tomatoes, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, tuna, Parmesan cheese, olive oil, bacon, pasta ,small pepperoni, chicken, kielbasa, garlic, garlic salt, multiple seasonings, cumin, hot peppers, black pepper, etc.

Some of us add a few of these extras, some add more....my mix is tuna, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, pasta, hot pepper flakes, garlic salt, lots of black pepper, tomatoes when available in our own garden.

Mom is the only one that will add any kind of bottled dressing to that. The rest of us use olive oil and a watered down red wine vinegar and plenty of it...sort of like a salad stew or soup when we are done. We make up our salads in large soup bowls and eat them with a spoon. They ARE the meal.

I've had people who have tried our salads that were amazed~they didn't think they would taste that good, I'm guessing~and exclaimed they were addictive. They talk about them for years and tell me they can't seem to make them right at their own house. My middle son will come for a visit and beg for a salad...says he dreams of them when he's away and has been craving them for so long.

These types of salad meals were started many years ago in our family when my parents went vegan and were eating mostly raw foods. They did that for over 15 yrs and the salad was their mainstay back then....over the years it grew into something not quite vegan any longer due to us kids coming to visit and putting our own spin on it, but the basic salad base was the same.

We normally eat these salads 3-4 times a week but sometimes daily, depending on the mood, if we have the salad cut up and our cravings at the time.

 

[digitS']

Eating habits and etiquette are some of the first things we learn as children. It takes very conscious effort for most people to vary them. After all, we were told at age 4, it would be rude to do so.

Even if it is just the enjoyment of food, how we enjoy it is baked in . Then, there is the maturing and sophistication of tastes. "Only children eat something like that!" "You have to be a strong, manly man to eat these."

I just try to relax when eating with people with a different culture than what I grew up with. I know, cultural relativity. That and my personal rule: never pick up the chopsticks! Shoot. There aren't just proper uses but there's a proper way to set them down!

Steve

 

[ninnymary]

Bee, can you post a picture of your salad? Do you chop all those things in large quantities and then keep in fridge for those days that you will need it? They do sound good!

Mary

 

[aftermidnight]

After dinner? The only salad we eat after dinner is a fruit salad.
We eat a lot of salads, it depends what we are having as to when we eat them. If we are having a meat and potato meal it's before, pasta dishes it's with and sometimes the salad is the main course. When I grill shish kabobs they go on a bed of rice to soak up the juices, usually accompanied with a Greek salad. A Caesar can be the main if topped with chicken and a side of garlic toast or in the summer I usually have it with steak. Potato salads we usually have with a cold plate or meat pies.

My latest favorite is a kale mix we buy that also has a packet of cranberries and nuts included along with a poppy seed dressing. There's also a similar kale mix with cubed sweet potato in it that we like.

Other favs...
Shrimp, cucumber and sweet onion with a light O.O. oregano and white wine vinegar.
Wilted Spinach
Fruit
Slaws or just plain old shredded cabbage and onion with O.O. and vinegar.
Garden (greens, shredded carrot, peppers, sweet onion, cucumber, radishes and cherry tomatoes) I have a cupboard full of mix and match flavored O.O.'s and balsamic vinegars along with my own raspberry vinegar I make every couple of years.

Rambling right along ,I haven't bought or grown iceberg lettuce for a long time, to buy it's pricey up here so I usually go for a three pack of Cos. The only lettuce I grow now is a Croatian lettuce, seed given to me by a friend, the only stipulation that came with it was she didn't want to see it sold commercially only passed among friends. I grow and collect fresh seed every year although last year the seed I planted was ten years old and still it grew like gangbusters. It' s similar to a butterhead. It even grows well in Texas . Picture taken by a GW friend in San Antonio.

You can't see it in this picture but it has a few red splashes of red on the leaves.
Some people I know only eat salads in the summer, I have a hard time getting my head around that.
Annette

 

[thistlebloom]

I took your question in a different way Nyboy.
We eat salads mostly in the summer. When it's cold out I'd rather have something hot.


In the summer we do like Bee and salad is dinner. But when it's not the main course we eat them with dinner. A separate salad bowl alongside the dinner plate.

 

[Beekissed]

Bee, can you post a picture of your salad? Do you chop all those things in large quantities and then keep in fridge for those days that you will need it? They do sound good!

Mary

Don't have a pic of that right now but am going to cut up salad again here in a few days and will get a pic then. We normally cut up enough to fill a gallon ziploc bag and store it in that way.

Usually keeps pretty good that way but we've noticed something about that....salads cut up and stored in the spring, summer and fall store very well for up to 5 days or more without turning brown. Salads done the same way in the winter will start to go off within 3 days or so, so we cut up lesser volumes in the winter but more frequently to keep it fresher.

Not sure if that has something to do with the source of the lettuce during those times or what but lettuce bought in the winter time doesn't store as well when cut up. That's one reason I want to move into a four season harvest with romaines this year so we'll have our own lettuce and greens source.