I am eating a lot of salad these days. My CSA is supplying us with enough lettuce (of several varieties) to make two meal-size salads per day per week. A friend of mine once told me that she needs to eat at least one salad a day. I've never felt this compulsion, and quietly wondered to myself what was wrong with me for not.  A side salad now and then would be as far as I'd go. That's ok, right?

But lately, with all the salad coming in from the farm, they've been my go-to lunches. If I miss the lunch one, we'll have one at dinner. If we don't, we'll never be able to eat our way through it all. And so, with all this salad-eating, I'm learning what my criteria are for a good salad - crunch & color.

I like lots of crunch in my salads so I've made some croutons out of day-old local bread by cutting it up in cubes, tossing in olive oil and herbs, and baking in the oven until they turn crispy. Fresh pea pods from the CSA add another dimension of green to the salad and help the crunch factor too. Purple cabbage, a newcomer to our CSA box this week, is another great addition to up the crunch & color factor.

Local berries are still coming in and throwing some of these on top give the salad a more unique flavor. Local cheese sprinkled on top can also give the salad a more distinctive taste.

The best part of eating all these salads is the experimenting I've been able to do. Having a salad everyday used to sound repetitive and boring to my palate. But in the last two weeks I've eaten a lot of salad and no two have been alike. There are so many variables that can be added or eliminated. Besides, what I've already mentioned, here are some of my other favorite salad additions (not all local. I apologize.):

sunflower seeds
garbanzo beans
artichoke hearts
hard boiled egg
chopped carrots
chopped green onions