"Holidays and salad days, and days of moldy mayonnaise" - Frank Zappa

We're more than 1/2 way through the annual Hades we call summer, with its heat, humidity, mosquitoes, and those cicadas or whatever beating their wings to sound like a scene from "Ramar Of The Jungle."  

If Summer had a Facebook page, I would not "like" it.

But because it's not the time of year when we want a nice hot bowl o' stew or Dixie Pork Chops for supper, it's the time of year when salads can star as the main attraction.  We don't want to heat up the kitchen anyway!

The rest of the year, the salad is something to get down before you hit the beef bar or the sausage station, so that later you can say you ate vegetables.

Salads are great with fresh leafy lettuce - good old iceberg, or Romaine, or what-have-you, and nice Maryland tomatoes and cucumbers, onions, mushrooms, carrots, celery, red cabbage, olives (black or green), anchovies, shredded cheese, beets...the list is as long as the produce department is wide.  

If you'd like to turn that green goodness into a hearty meal, add some shrimp, steak slivers, chicken nuggets, tuna, or just about anything, and you're in tall cotton.

HOWEVER, as a founding member of We Love Salads, I must speak out against the mixed-up medleys that some like.  (Two of these people happen to be kin to me, one being my wife, the other, my sister, and I love them both, but still...) A strawberry is an ice cream topping or a cereal accompaniment.  It does not like to be chomped in the same mouthful as a red onion.  Ditto for watermelon and feta cheese.  Just because things taste great on their own does not mean they go together. 

SBC Salad

And this is why I feel the need to draw the line on further salad experimentation.  The Food Lion website offers this recipe for Strawberry Banana Cheesecake Salad.  

I'll probably be seeing this on a plate near me very soon.