Every weekday morning at six-thirty, I pack a salad to take to work. Every weekday afternoon at one-thirty, I eat my salad.
I am not fond of salad.
As a diabetic, it is tough to come up with portable meals that are nutritious and can be eaten at a desk. Sandwiches are out, of course, and there are not enough leftovers to be assured of a satisfying meal every day. Plus, it works very well to have all of my meals except dinner take place on automatic pilot: David makes eggs for breakfast, late morning is plain yogurt with fruit-only jam, lunch is salad. No thinking required, which is good, because thinking does not engage until around eight AM. I try to change up the ingredients in the salad, but I really just vary two basic recipes.
When I saw the book Salad Love come into the library, my first thought was, “Salad. Bleh.” Then I opened the book, and “love” is exactly the right word for what I felt. Author David Bez, who is a very friendly-looking guy, decided to make a different salad at his desk every day for three years! Here, he has chosen 260 different salads, one for each workday of the year, arranged by season. Each recipe is on one page, with a stunning picture of the salad at the top. Every single page has a picture. So gorgeous! Yet there are really very few exotic ingredients. Hemp seeds were probably the most unusual item I saw.
Bez begins by explaining the five layers of successful salad building, and then has four pages of dressing recipes—24 of them!—each with a picture of a tiny white bowl holding that dressing. Then he goes into the salad recipes, and gives alternatives for all of them according to diet. For example, a salad with roast beef in it may feature a vegan alternative, or a salad with cooked grain may offer a raw foods alternative.
I am happy to say that when you look up this book on Amazon, you can see the beautiful photography inside. At the library, we just riffled through the pages when someone walked by, and every single person took it home. I might have to buy this one.
As David Bez says, “Buon appetito!”
Disclaimer: I read a library copy of this book. Opinions are solely my own and do not reflect those of my employer or anyone else. I do not receive money from Amazon when you click through, because Amazon does not play well with us in North Carolina.
