I won’t lie – building a freakin SALAD can seem pretty daunting. If you, like me, find the pursuit of salad-making a surprisingly difficult endeavor…well – ya’ve come to the right place.

Here’s a compiled list of components you might consider when building a salad. Personally, breaking down and abstracting components of a dish as open ended as salad helps me better understand what I need the day of when I’m tired, eepy, and not in the mood to think as much. Eventually, the routine of thinking through these things becomes habit enough, though, and the list becomes less and less relevant.

…Til the day I need it again.

Massage and mix well, and have a nice time! I’ve found that the best salads will have multiples of some of these components, like multiple ‘crunches’, or crunches that are, dare i say, intersectional…i.e. a vegetable that’s also a crunch. Ha, okay, not the right use of the word...

Components to a good salad

Some of these may overlap. The idea is to spark…ideas.

• An oil, olive
• A vinegar
  • 3:1 ratio for that^
• Greens, one to two varieties
• A crunch
• A seed
• A protein (tofu, tempeh, meat)
• A fat (avocado, nut)
• A citric acid, like lime, or lemon
• Purple/green cabbage
• A hardy but fresh sliced vegetable
• A cheese, grated
• A more complex dressing, optional
• A roasted veggie (like sliced pumpkin, for example), optional
• A salty mayo, optional

Is that list too long? Here’s a mini one for easy building:

Mini components to a good salad

• Leafy greens
• A protein, a fat
• A crunch
• An umami bomb
• + Oil, bit o’ salt, vinegar, massaged into greens