A-la-salad

I hate when I hear people say that they hate salads because, if you're willing to annoyingly pry a little bit, you usually come to discover that they don't dislike salad, they dislike plain lettuce.

Who doesn't dislike plain lettuce?

Only this guy 

However, while I've never really had a problem with salads, I only started to love them two years ago when I first went to Sweet Green. With everything from baby arugula, to raspberries, to sweet potato pieces, Sweet Green has every possible salad ingredient you can think of in a make-your-own format. 

Even if you tried, you probably couldn't come up with a mix of ingredients that wouldn't result in a spectacular salad because they truly stick to healthy, fresh, organic ingredients. Of course, you're going to end up paying for the freshness and variety, but as a once in a while treat, its well worth the expense.

While I can in no way recreate the extreme variety of Sweet Green in my own home, I have taken the concept of Sweet Green to heart in that, if you put some thought into what you put into your salads, they can be so much better than lettuce and whichever one or two veggies you had in your fridge.

Because I wanted a salad meal, as opposed to a salad side, I started with preparing some meat. I chopped up a chicken breast into smaller chunks and coated them in this hot sauce. Obviously you can buy generic buffalo hot sauce at the supermarket, but I really like the variety of flavors you can get from smaller vendors. This Tombstone Cilantro hot sauce from Wild Coyote is spectacular on meat, eggs, vegetables, pretty much everything. I bought it at a food street fair in Hoboken a few months ago and I've been loving it ever since. The best part, before I bought it I got to sample their 7 or 8 other flavors too, so I wasn't going into the purchase blind.

I let the chicken sit in the sauce for a good 30 minutes so the flavor could really get into the meat, and then I tossed it on the handy-dandy George Foreman.

Next up are toppings. First I made some homemade croutons, but I also wanted some vegetables. I figured there were enough flavors in the spicy chicken and the croutons that I stuck with simple staples: tomato and cucumber. I like to cube my cucumber instead of slicing it because you get more of a full cucumber flavor plus cucumber slices just don't fit into mouths that well. Whoever decided that slices should be the standard way to cut cucumbers was very silly or had a very large mouth.

Because I was already making croutons and chicken, I decided not to make my own salad dressing, but that's another great way to make your salads more original. I opted for blue cheese because I'm a blue cheese (and Gorgonzola) junky. Instead of pouring your dressing on top of your salad, dress your lettuce in a tuberware, close and shake to coat the lettuce without having to use a ton of dressing.

Last off I cut my chicken into bite sized pieces and put it all together. Tasty dinner-a-la-salad!