salad, the "new" fast food

My mom was a health food junkie. She decided that we would all be raw foodists when I was little, luckily my step-dad worked at a natural food store and brought home boxes of produce. California produce, mmm. Oranges and avocados by the case. So I learned to eat my vegetables and appreciate them, or go to bed hungry. Of course, when the opportunity presented itself I turned my back on eating healthy and discovered things like cheeseburgers, onion rings, soft serve ice cream, fried burritos and caffienated sodas. I wanted to be a chef and cook Italian food, or what I thought was Italian food. Lasagna, raviolis, spaghetti with cheese and cream. I bought an old cookbook from Tuscany, and was disappointed to find that it was almost only recipes for vegetables. Now I understand, the book was written before the advent of the electronic pasta maker. More recently, I have read that more than half of the people living in modern Italy suffer from Celiac's disease (the inability to digest gluten). I have had a lot of digestion problems during my life and I can pin point most of them to an over consumption of grains, especially bread. Bread, my favorite food! In Italy they serve bread with olive oil and garlic, with olives or tapenade, and the sandwiches full of preserved meats and items such as roasted red peppers or sun dried tomatos. The foods that were meant to last from when the fresh food ran out in the winter until it sprouted again in the spring, not to be the mainstays of diet year round. The modern day grocery store, while full of thousands of options of processed packaged foods that you can 'grab and go', has a silver lining, also known as the produce section. It makes up for the parts of the year when farmer's markets are closed and nothing is growing in my garden. In January in the north, we have a lot of cabbages freshly available. But, for as long as they continue to ship produce from the south, January means lemons and other citrus fruits, as well as summer veggies, are now coming into season. I had a sample of a salad at my local whole foods grocery store, the demo was for an old fashioned food processor that was hand cranked and stainless steel (very eco friendly). I can't afford that machine right now, but I have a great chef's knife and I know how to use it. If you have a food processor that slices you can save a lot of time. Take this for lunch, instead of a sandwich ;)
Super Salad
lettuce leaves
cucmber
celery
zucchini
carrots
an apple
a lemon
red bell pepper
herbs like parsley, cilantro, dandelion greens
fresh onion (red?)
celeriac
fennel bulb (is very delicious, unless you hate the flavor of fennel/anise)
Avocado
sunflower seed, almonds for protein

chop, shred or slice thinly, any or all of the above ingredients, leaving the lettuce leaves a bit larger. Un-peeled lemons are tasty cut very thinly, if you don't like the peel, then just squeeze the juice over the salad at the end. To dress my salads I usually use a little apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, and a bit of olive oil sometimes. I use an organic low-salt seasoning blend to sprinkle over top. 

yogurt dressing
1 cup of plain yogurt
pinch of salt
big pinch of dry parsley, crushed
black pepper
spoonful of lemon juice
1 or 2 cloves of fresh garlic, paste or smashed in a garlic press works, or even just chopped fine

mix together, makes a ranch style dressing
 If you need your daily bread, have a piece with your salad, or make a pita pocket of it.. with fresh veggies the options are seemingly endless.