How to Celebrate National Salad Month

Salad Platter

May is National Salad Month. Salad lore traces back centuries to simple vegetable dishes of the Roman Empire. Today salads are made with crisp greens, delectable pastas, luscious fruit and flaked seafood. A different salad can be served every day of the year. Here are ideas tossed out for your salad days.

Instructions

1. 

   Serve up a salad buffet. Visit a produce department for green variety. Romaine, leafy lettuces, cabbage and mustard leaves add extra vitamins and color to traditional iceberg lettuces. Put out washed greens with dishes of vegetables like sugar peas, grated carrots, raw broccoli florets and cauliflower chunks. Choose cherry or small tomatoes for easy handling. Put chilled salad or soup bowls out for your family. This is a build-your-own-salad event.

2. 

   Swap salads with a friend. If you make a great tossed green salad and a neighbor makes terrific potato salad, each should make two salads. Keep one and swap one. Hold a salad tasting with every guest bringing a favorite salad. Set out the salads and swap salad recipes and tips.

3. 

   Dine out on the salad menu. Flip your restaurant menu to the salads and try a new selection. Start your meal with a small salad or go straight to the main salads. Restaurant salads may be a towering plate of romaine, grilled chicken, apples and cheeses. A seasonal fresh fruit salad bowl may be a half pineapple sliced and buried in a garden of berries, melons, grapes and tropical fruit.

4. Play at the kid table. Children celebrate salads by making raisin faces on peach halves, adding celery stick arms and legs, then gobbling the salad man. Make finger salads for children by providing lettuce leaves, cherry tomatoes, celery and carrot sticks, sugar peas and baby corn ears. Add a dipping dressing and napkins.

5. 

   Serve up salads in fun style. Hollow out watermelons or large melons for fruit salads. Use a pottery bowl for bean salads. Serve pasta salads over slices of garlic bread. Cut open and clean out squash and pumpkins for vegetable salads. Visit dollar stores for unusual bowls or tubs to hold ice. Nestle your chilled tuna or chicken salad bowls in the ice-filled punch bowls. Enjoy your journey through National Salad Month. Take the advice of horticulturist George Ellwanger, "To remember a successful salad is generally to remember a successful dinner; at all events, the perfect dinner necessarily includes the perfect salad.”


Tips & Warnings

• Have fun with your salads. Experiment with ingredients, garnishes and dressings.

• Many people have allergies. Use caution when introducing new ingedients to your menus.