My favourite salads..

A spinach thingie.
You’ll need:
A bunch of spinach/other greens
Some button mushrooms: maybe a 100 gms?
Some of whatever else you like. Torn lettuce? Shredded carrots? Mixed greens? Boiled eggs? Cooked shrimp? Bring ‘em on!
Wash the greens in several washes of water. I detest this part...but ‘tis must be done, and done well. Keep the smaller leaves whole, tear the large leaves, discard the diseased ones. Spin dry in a towel being careful not to spray self/extremely expensive electronic equipment. Wipe the mushrooms with a dampish cloth, quarter or leave whole. Treat the rest of the salad ingredients the way you like them.
The dressing:
Some vinegar. You could also use lime juice, but i don’t because it becomes too chaat-like- which is not bad, just not wanted here.
Some oil
Some honey
one diced apple (or something equally tart and sweet: like grapefruit, or in a pinch, tomatoes)
one minced red onion
The usual gang: salt, pepper, mustard
Shake all together, pour over the salad, toss, stick fork in. Yippee! Perfect for a weekday lunch, which is where i am having it in the photo.

A mildly Turkish salad, with many thanks to D for making it for me so many times.
You’ll need:
Some tomatoes, large and red.
A cucumber or two
A large bunch of dill
Chop the tomatoes and cucumbers into large dice. Chop the dill fine
The dressing? Vinegar, olive oil, mustard, salt, minced garlic, maybe some oregano. Pour over the salad and toss. If you have some pomegranate, toss that in for the colour.
Now you will see that this is a very highly flavoured salad. The way to eat this is to take it, still in the bowl it was tossed in, a crusty baguette wrapped in a project report or something just as splendidly inappropriate, some olive oil in a saucer, a bottle of red wine, two stemmed glasses, and a good friend to a moonlit terrace.. Enjoy.. And if you insist on eating this as weekday lunch, then I would recommend adding a little something to make it less intense. Some lettuce perhaps, or cabbage, or spinach.