Time for salads

Mohammed Moosa, Wikimedia Commons

Put together an antipasto salad sometime soon and add your favorite ingredients to customize it.

---

Salads (in my opinion) are appealing because we can customize them to our own preferences. If a recipe calls for one or more ingredients that we don’t like, we are free to either leave those out or substitute for ingredients we do like.

Don’t like kidney beans? That’s fine, just use some other types of beans, or don’t use any beans at all. The only time you might run into a problem is if you are wanting to make a bean salad.

Anyway, it isn’t just beans that are flexible ingredients; you might be planning to make a tossed green salad for a crowd, but there will be guests you know are kind of picky. Aunt Sally says she’s allergic to tomatoes, or your cousin Linda wouldn’t touch an avocado if her life depended on it and Uncle Tyler really tries to avoid onions. In a situation like this, you can offer a big bowl of mixed lettuce and other greens, and various separate bowls of the questionable ingredients. That way, people can add what they like to the salad.