Annoyingly uninteresting salad with a radicchio/romaine hybrid & regular romaine, tomatoes, cuke in a crème fraîche dressing . Not sure how I managed to make the blandest dressing in history, but I did. Or maybe my tastebuds are still stuck in EWR 
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Some Chinese salads to accompany various meals – lotus root and two kinds of black fungus / woodear mushroom salad.
They pack a flavor punch and give lovely textural contrast to the rest of the meal.
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Keep forgetting to post even though it’s been weeks of salads here with the hot weather.
My favorite this week (as in daily creation & consumption) has been a Russian-style Vinegret Salad – beets, carrots, boiled potato, red onion, and scallions, dressed simply with olive oil and vinegar until the balance tastes right.
Fantastic flavor and texture combination – the beets and carrots are sweet, the carrot is crunchy, the potato is soft and absorbs the dressing as a foil, just delicious! I added some fennel yesterday, which added a nice crunch and complexity.
The other repeat of late is my usual zucchini carpaccio / shaved zucchini salad, dressed simply with lemon juice, olive oil, and parmesan. I might add some hazelnuts or pistachios today.
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Oriental Coleslaw which sometimes is named Ramen salad. I added 1.5 C diced cold chicken - purchased a container of just that at the grocery when I picked up the shredded coleslaw mix, since I forgot to get the rotisserie chicken earlier on my Costco run.
The other half of the container of diced chicken will become chicken salad filling for a couple of the Costco croissants that I did remember to get. (Most are frozen for future almond croissant adventure, when I’m willing to turn on the oven.)
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Looking at Oriental Salad recipes online there are a TON of differences for the dressing Most have a lot more sugar and oil than our version. Ours is pretty minimal - For 8 oz shredded coleslaw mix, whisk together1 package chicken flavor ramen noodles seasoning packet. 1 1/2 T. granulated sugar, 1/4 C. vegetable oil, 2 1/2 T. white vinegar.
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Homegrown lettuce and dill, green onions from a local farm, Greek white balsamic and Italian olive oil
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Main dish pasta salad today, and for several upcoming lunches. Half recipe using macaroni noodles, homemade salad supreme seasoning copycat and dressed with 1/2 C. bottled Olive Garden Italian. We’ll top each serving with shredded mozzarella, and have naan bread and a fruit salad as sides.
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I haven’t made Curried Chicken Salad in a few years even though my friends and I love it. Had to throw out my old can of Madras curry powder and instead used Jamaican curry powder on hand. This comes from Food Network … that site alone has so many different curried chicken salad recipes!
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/curried-chicken-salad-recipe-2009622
This time I didn’t have parsley. I always increase the golden raisins, curry powder, chutney, slivered almonds and I add 2-3 stalks of finely chopped celery. Instead of poaching chicken breasts, I bought 2 organic rotisserie chickens from WF and saved dark meat for my cat and white for this recipe. I hadn’t tried TJ’s mango chutney before … bought it for this … it’s ok but I prefer the Major Grey’s.
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The whole idea of defining a salad, or, for that matter, a slaw, is intriguing. Is a salad mixture with a base of uncooked vegetables or something more? If something is traditionally called a salad, is it in fact a salad? For the Fourth we made some traditional potato salad (boiled potatoes, onion, celery, dill pickles, mayonnaise, yellow mustard, celery seed, and dill pickle juice). It was a delicious and very indulgent gut bomb. If you call it a salad, the label is misleading. Before I finished my second serving, I had a craving for things like butter lettuce, romaine, and arugula, and a bottle of Banyuls red and a bottle of Texas Olive Ranch Picual were singing “mix a bit of us” to the Roland Dijon in the refrigerator. Eating as we are wont to do on the Fourth is a flawed idea. I would have settled for coleslaw or even beans rather than leftover potato salad and ribs.
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Lovely presentation with the multi-color leafy base. For our curry chicken we like to add chopped dried apricots, too.
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There used to be a deli in Toronto called Yorkville Gourmet, that made a Jamaican curried chicken salad with fresh pineapple and Jamaican curry powder. I had clipped the recipe from the paper about 30 years ago but seem to have misplaced it.
That Jamaican curried chicken salad didn’t contain chutney.
I realized my mango chutney had a BB of 2023, so I skipped the chutney when I made a chicken salad last week. I added some chopped nectarines. Sometimes I add chopped dried apricots.
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I’m sure this isn’t the recipe, but it’s interesting with the inclusion of coconut milk. https://www.food.com/recipe/chicken-and-pineapple-salad-with-curry-mayonnaise-139
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I love curried chicken salad. One of the best I ever had was at the Lancaster Hotel in Houston. It was served on a pineapple half. Pineapple was used in the salad, and shards of macadamia nut brittle were scattered over the top. It is probably long gone but a great memory.
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When I lived in Marin County I would go to a great upscale takeaway place in Tiburon called Let’s Eat. They made a terrific curried turkey salad with sliced seedless red grapes. They also had lovely Chinese Chicken Salad; I had to get some of each.
GG Bridge toll is now $10! How can average people in Marin afford to commute for jobs?
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Sicilian style cauliflower salad, yellow and white; fennel, red onion, capers , cracked Castelvetrano olives, yellow raisins , mint, vinaigrette with peperoncino. I will probably grill shrimp and put on top, toasted sourdough on the side.
ETA….and of course there was garlic!
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My cousin and uncle’s favourite place for Chinese Chicken Salad is/was Tao Tao in Sunnyvale, iirc. (I realize this is in the San Jose area, not Marin county. 
I’m just mentioning it because of their Chinese chicken salad)
https://taotao.carry-out.com/
It’s not as easy to find on menus in Canada.
I guess people become used to whatever tolls are part of their normal day to day life.
I had one employer in Toronto who would cover employee subway passes each month. That was partly because the job involved a lot of trips to the courthouses across the city, I think.
I wonder if some employers would cover tolls as a perk.
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The two principal North South commuting routes in Austin are MoPac/1 and IH-35. MoPac has a toll option that is supposedly faster (unless there is an accident). The tolls fluctuate based on usage and have been seen as high as $23! Thankfully, when I was a commuter I worked across the street from the Capitol and lived 11 minutes away.
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If and when I make curried chicken salad, it always gets fresh pineapple. And nuts.
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I have been thinking about pasta salad that the offspring and the kids would like and remembered a Bon Apetit salad from ages ago and it was a big hit, we all were planning to eat the leftovers for lunch.
Ingredients
For the Salad:
20 oz refrigerated cheese tortellini
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cucumber, peeled and chopped
½ red onion, thinly sliced
1 cup pitted kalamata olives, chopped
1 cup fresh mozzarella balls
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 cups baby spinach or arugula
¼ cup chopped fresh basil
For the Dressing:
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
¼ cup vinegar or lemon juice
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp honey
1 clove garlic, minced
½ tsp dried oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
Cook the tortellini according to package instructions, then drain and rinse under cold water.
In a large bowl, combine the cooked tortellini, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, olives, mozzarella, Parmesan, spinach, and basil.
In a small jar, whisk together olive oil, vinegar or lemon juice, Dijon mustard, honey, garlic, oregano, salt, and pepper.
Pour the dressing over the salad and toss gently to combine.
Chill for at least 30 minutes before serving. Enjoy!
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One tortellini pasta salad we like has walnut halves as topping, over a bed of spinach.
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