Aunt Salad

I'm not a huge salad fan but when I do make one, I like them to have lots of variety and texture. When I was in my teens, my California-raised Aunt Sally served us a salad one evening that remains fixed in my memory even today.

Unlike the salads served in our home, which consisted mainly of lettuce and tomato with the occasional half an avocado shared among six diners, this salad was filled with raw crunchy broccoli, green and purple onions, cherry tomatoes, red and yellow bell peppers, several kinds of lettuce, raw cauliflower, marinated artichoke hearts and big, big chunks of rich, buttery avocado all bound together into one glorious whole by a nice lemon vinaigrette. I make this kind of bumpy, generous salad whenever I'm presented with a salad bar and, just occasionally, at home.

This particular salad was also graced a sprinkle of grated cheese and a lovely slab of perfectly grilled and lightly soy seasoned salmon that I bought, ready made, at Andronico's last time I did my shopping. It had been a hot, hot day and only a salad would do for dinner so I pulled out the crisper drawer and got to chopping. It was a cornucopia of fresh California produce, topped with the bounty of the sea at our doorstep. Cool, crisp, satisfyingly chewy-crunchy, it brought Aunt Sally's memorable salad to mind.