pix & kardz

By: kardz by kris

Nov 07 2025

Tags: food, health, recipe, recipes, salad

Category: green, recipe, salad

2 Comments

I am not much of a cook, but salads have always been a favourite meal or side for me to make. This seems to go back to my childhood, when making salads was my only regular contribution to family dinner, besides setting the table – which included folding napkins.

Back then I prepared salads the way I used to see my mother making them – usually with a few solid staple ingredients: iceberg lettuce, shredded carrots, green onions and occasionally tomatoes, all tossed up with Kr*ft’s M*racle Wh*p Salad Dressing.

Although to my mother’s credit, when she made a cucumber salad, her lemon dressing was yummy. No M*racle Wh*p then. And she did not use vinegar in that salad either. Just the juice of freshly squeezed lemons and a bit of sugar. In hindsight, there may have been a bit of salt included in that mix, although it is not an ingredient that seemed prominent.

Life happens, as it does, and in the meantime I have discovered that my favourite greens include butter lettuce, Romaine, arugula, kale, and also red leaf lettuce and radicchio, both of which are more red than green. I occasionally even enjoy some roasted Belgian endive, although that is not to everyone’s taste. The Belgian endive tends to be somewhat bitter, so roasting the heads mellows that bitterness. Alternately, caramelizing them on a stove top also reduces the bitterness. But I digress.

These days I prefer making my own dressings – usually with extra virgin olive oil, juice squeezed from a lime, a splash of apple cider vinegar, black pepper, and possibly salt. Quite often I also include some goat cheese, crumbled with a fork.

A couple of years ago after the pandemic, I reconnected with a dear friend I have known for more decades than seem possible, and we decided to meet weekly for lunch. She prepares the entrees, sandwiches or soup, and I prepare the salads. I generally do not follow any set recipe and never seem to make the same salad twice. So, it seemed useful to keep a record of most of them for the first year for reference, and occasionally I still do that.

This was the most recent salad, and I happened to capture a photo of it.

Main Ingredients: baby arugula, a handful of shredded kale and other greens that I happened to have, 2 red anjou pears cubed, and a handful of quartered green grapes (they were large, otherwise they would just have been halved)

Dressing: extra virgin olive oil, juice of one freshly-squeezed lime, apple cider vinegar, black pepper and chopped cilantro

Topping: feta cheese and slivered almonds

The salad was tossed just before eating, and it was paired with some lovely carrot cumin soup (not pictured) courtesy of my friend (also not pictured).

Feel free to make it and let me know if you like it. Do you incorporate arugula in your salads?

Life has been crazy busy lately, but I had the yen to blog. So there it is. Once things slow down, I hope to be back. That is the plan.

Cheers and blessings,
Chris 💚