When I was green in judgment ...

I always thought that the phrase 'salad days' meant the happy days of one's youth, but was interested to see on Michael Quinion's World Wide Words (worth a visit if you love words), that it first appeared in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra ( 1606), where Cleopatra says “My salad days, When I was green in judgment”, referring to her relationship with Julius Caesar when she was young. (See the full entry for salad days here.) So basically it means a period of youthful inexperience, which is perhaps not completely inappropriate for this post - I started changing my eating habits only 9 months ago. (About time.) One of the major changes was having a salad as a main meal every day. Here are two recent ones I've made:

Number 1: I always add beans (for protein) of some type, a little cheese, and nuts for crunch. The crunch-factor of salad is Very Important to me, to the annoyance of my husband. This one had: mixed salad leaves, half a chopped carrot, about 9 chopped raw almonds, 20g feta cheese, 1/3 tin of butter beans. Juice of half a small lemon, drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, ground sea salt and black pepper.

Number 2: Eeek! No more chickpeas, borlotti-, butter- or red kidney beans in the cupboard! So I used a slice of bauernbrot (german farmer's loaf - half-rye) chopped and drizzled with olive oil. Added a chopped apple, almonds, and blue cheese this time around. My goodness, the bits of bread look humungus in my picture! Yummy yum yum. I could live on salad all year! What are your favourite salady ingredients?