Salad

Romaine  is about as far as I'm willing to go down the lettuce scale.

I prefer Iceberg, in spite of its negligible nutritional value. I'll take its fiber and water content, and just celebrate the pure joy of chewing.
 

Romaine is an acceptable second, but keep it simple; straight up on a sandwich, or a basic Cesar salad. 
 

I love spinach, but not on in a salad. There is no satisfaction in its feeble excuse for a crunch. Steamed, creamed or even boiled, but never straight out of the ground. 
 

Arugula, radicchio or any other baby greens? No thank you. No amount of feta cheese or bacon bits can make up for that kind of disappointment. 

In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) :

You're wrong.  Spinach and arugula are the best for taste.

Arugula has excessive taste, and raw spinach lacks an acceptable level of crunch. 

In reply to Stampie :

And, listen... I didn't come here to piss on your preferred leafy greens. Have at it and enjoy them. I'm just saying that they're not necessarily the ones for me. 

I like a Caesar Salad a ton. I often make at them home for lunch. 

If I I'm out of ingredients, I use it as an excuse to take the car for a little drive to Panera and get their Green Goddess salad. 

In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) :

I fully accept that you can be wrong in your preferred leafy greens.

I guess my definition of salad is a little looser.

I love greens but if I'm making one for myself, I don't necessarily want to mess with washing the greens. Sometimes it's often some high quality tomatoes, an avocado, black olives, a couple of hard boiled eggs, shredded carrots, chunks of provolone cheese, maybe some fresh chopped onion, with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. 

If there's some leftover salmon or shrimp, throw that in too, plus whatever else you want. 
 

While I'm thinking of it, I like to spread my salad on top of a cooked potato, add the dressing, and mix it all up. 

I like a lot of different salads, with a lot of different types of lettuce and other greens, as appropriate to the other ingredients and dressing.

i default to red leaf lettuce for a basic salad.

What's arugula?

Its ah veg-et-able.

Get a salad spinner.  Chop lettuce, wash, then spin dry.  You can use the bowl for your salad bowl too. 
 

Woody (Forum Supportum) said:

Arugula, radicchio or any other baby greens? No thank you. No amount of feta cheese or bacon bits can make up for that kind of disappointment. 

This.

My go to is iceberg or, preferably, spinach. Romaine is ok. 

I am a really big fan of the small iceberg "dinner" salad you can get at some restaraunts. Makes me feel less worse about the basket of fried haddock and fries.

Stampie said:

In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) :

I fully accept that you can be wrong in your preferred leafy greens.

As do I. 

Woody (Forum Supportum) said:

Arugula has excessive taste, and raw spinach lacks an acceptable level of crunch. 

Crunch, that's what the croutons bring to the salad.

Please tell me, you're using croutons.  Right?

A number of years ago, I realized that the part of my salad I liked the least was the lettuce.

Traditional Greek salad for me.  Tomato, cucumber, peppers, onion, all cut chunky.

I have been using quite a bit of kale in mine lately. Good bit of crunch that way.

How about Napa Cabbage?  Used to be called Chinese cabbage.  Good mouth feel, diverse textures with a sweet-sour finish.

Nice summer salad. I get requests for it at family functions and camping.  This recipe says to bake the noodles, I saute' them in the butter with the flavor pack.  Easier

In reply to Indy - Guy :

Croutons are a just a crutch for an otherwise weak and feeble bowl of greenery. 
 

Seriously, they're just stale garlic bread that they used to just throw away at the end of the night. 

Yeah, no croutons. I'd rather have actual bread. I pick nearly all the croutons out if they are there.

Crutons are for the weak, but I won't deny they are tasty. Iceberg lettuce is only acceptable for mouthfeel, it's useless otherwise and I will DIE ON THAT HILL

Traditional Greek is a blessed concoction, damned healthy too. This time of year you can get free cucumbers from neighbors all day so truly garden-fresh is super easy.

Datsun310Guy said:

Get a salad spinner.  Chop lettuce, wash, then spin dry.  You can use the bowl for your salad bowl too. 
 

I have that same salad spinner, made by Oxo. It's the Ferrari of salad spinners. 

It's totally dumb, but I like to see how fast I can get it to spin. I can get that thing absolutely cranking! It even has a "brake" to slow it down if it gets out of control. Works really well!

GIRTHQUAKE said:

Crutons are for the weak, but I won't deny they are tasty. Iceberg lettuce is only acceptable for mouthfeel, it's useless otherwise and I will DIE ON THAT HILL

Traditional Greek is a blessed concoction, damned healthy too. This time of year you can get free cucumbers from neighbors all day so truly garden-fresh is super easy.

Iceberg lettuce is fine. It adds bulk and crunch and has almost no flavor of it's own. It's a perfect base on which to build.

But croutons are delicious. As is cheese, ranch dressing, bacon bits, and oh, crap. Suddenly this thing isn't so healthy anymore. 

Spinach should never be cooked. It turns, I tell you. Put it in a salad or on a sandwich and I'm game. 
 

Asparagus. I can't say I'm a fan. Fry it in butter and bacon grease, s&p, and I can tolerate it. I know it's good for me, but almost isn't worth it. 
 

And keep your vinegar based dressings. I'm not interested. 

Salads are a big part of my program, and I've noticed that people are very narrow minded when it comes to salad. Mention the word and people automatically think of lettuce. I like lettuce, but rarely use it for salad. Crunch is no more important to salad than the rest of your meal. It's optional. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  Croutons, I can take 'em, or leave 'em

Europeans make a lot of single vegetable salads. PW regularly makes tomato salad, cucumber salad, (green and yellow) bean salad and one of my favourites, (white) radish salad. Think that's odd? What about potato salad? One of my favourites, we eat it as a meal, salad Niçoise.

Cheese of any kind does not belong in salad, and I guess I would say that about any dairy product.

TIL, half the people in this thread think mayo is spicy.

z31maniac said:

TIL, half the people in this thread think mayo is spicy.

half of em were born above the mason dixon line. ( for the record, I was- and I am an acknowledged outlier, as I prefer my food to contain violence)

Salad preference? protein, green, go. I've gone almost completely dairy free- it's all been tasting spoiled to me for some reason so nuts to that. I prefer spring mix. My cats prefer spinach.