A Salad Story

01 June 2021

A plateful of salad is always part of a healthy meal. When you go on a diet, a simple salad preparation is all you need to maintain your body weight and to keep you leaner but healthy.

The word salad was reported to originate from the very old Latin word "sal" for "salt." 

It is a dish with a mixture of food with at least one raw ingredient. Salad dishes have their dressings and usually served cold, at room temperature but sometimes it is served warm.

Today there are many kinds of salads with appropriate dressings that are readily available and can be bought with the appropriate dressing. They are also served in different meals such as :

● Appetizer salad - as the name implies is served as the first order of a meal. It is served in smaller portion

● Side salad - goes with the main course as a side dish, for example, potato salad and Caesar salad.

● Main course salad - usually contains a part of high-protein food such as meat, fish, eggs, legumes, or cheese

● Dessert salad - sweet variation that contains fruit, gelatin, sweeteners, or whipped cream.

Salads also have variations and continue to evolve as people discover ways of preparing them. Some of the kinds of salads are:

● Fruit salad - consists of fruits that are fresh or canned

● Green salad (garden salad) - consists of leafy vegetables such as lettuce varieties, spinach, or rocket (arugula)

● When non-greens make up a large portion of the salad, it may be called a vegetable salad. Common raw vegetables (in the culinary sense) used in a salad include cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, onions, carrots, celery, radishes, mushrooms, avocado, olives, among others.

● Wedge salad is a green salad made of lettuce head which is halved or quartered with

other ingredients on top of it

● Rice and pasta salad - has its main ingredient rice or pasta 

● Bound salad - is an American-style potato salad with egg and mayonnaise assembled with thick sauces such as mayonnaise. Examples of bound salad include tuna salad, American-style potato salad with egg and mayonnaise. Tuna salad, chicken salad,Egg salad, coleslaw, and potato salad are some of its examples.

● Dessert salad - are often sweet, prepared without any leafy greens, and are made of gelatin or whipped cream, for example, jello salad, pistachio salad, and ambrosia 

Salads can be eaten without any other food. It is more healthy when the dressings are simple with less fat. There are also a wide variety of dressings that go with each salad recipe, such as:

● Oil-based dressing

● Fresh cream-based dressing

● Mayonnaise-based dressing

● Natural yogurt dressing

There are many reasons why we should eat a salad a day. As reported, the reasons are as follows:

● Eating salad especially green salad keep us healthier and makes us feel active

● It keeps our weight in control

● The natural vitamins and mineral in a fruit or vegetable salad make our bones strong and healthy

● Eating salad also keeps our heart healthy

● It also aids in digestion

● It also improves the color of our skin

Aside from these health benefits, making a salad recipe is simple and easy to prepare. Usually, the ingredients are available and accessible. Most of the time, we can have these ingredients in our own backyard. Most restaurants, too, grow their own garden of vegetables and herbs to make fresh and healthy bowls of salad for their customers.

I remember my old neighbor who retired from his company. I observed that after retirement, his retired friends had always come together in his house for some coffee and conversations. They chat for hours and leave his house almost dark. 

I was curious and asked my neighbor what was going on. He told me that they are brewing something exciting and financially rewarding. I did not insist on knowing further details about that exciting thing. After several weeks, they no longer had meetings. Instead, they helped my neighbor prepare his huge backyard planting vegetables and herbs each day.

Until one day I discovered that they were actually making fresh vegetable salads to be delivered to the town’s biggest supermarket. I was aghast to find this out. So, I surmised that it was the product of long meetings they had in the past several weeks.

They were excited every day as I saw them prepare everything in his house with all the materials being prepared for the fresh green salads for delivery. Through their own efforts of contributing money for the investment and helping one another physically with planting vegetables, they were able to achieve their goal to be in the salad-making business.

After a while, my neighbor bought another piece of land near his house to extend his vegetable farm. He had some assistants to take care of the farm. They were also retirees like him. I really admire their strong determination to succeed in that endeavor.

After a year, they were already distributing their products to other neighboring towns and I thought that the business was growing and successful. It was really inspiring.

One day, they gave a sample of the garden salad. It was tasty, fresh, succulent green. I was amazed how they concocted the ingredients for the dressing since they were all men. The dressing that they had was simple, not too sweet, just enough to increase my appetite for the salad. They were making a lot of money and they were really happy with the result of their toiling away for many months.

Now, they already have a brand name and are still continuously working hard after retirement. I watched them purchase a standing desk for paperwork relevant to the salad-making business. The desk was adjustable such as the one from FlexiSpot. I saw it on the company website, the name is Kana Bamboo Standing Desk which looks durable and nice with the bamboo desktop. It is unique and I think it is environmental- friendly because the material is bamboo.

I hope I could also have that kind of table that is made of bamboo. I hope you also do.