Hitting the bar for salad inspiration

As you might imagine, eating salad every day this month has forced me to look for inspiration in unusual places. Here’s my new favorite: the self-serve bar at Whole Foods Market.

I know—finding salad ideas at a salad bar, who’d have thunk it? Hear me out, though. The self serve-bar at Whole Foods makes trying new veggie combos super-convenient by offering a wide selection of pre-dressed, inventive salads and listing all the ingredients in each. So there’s no guesswork about what you’ll need if you want to replicate a salad at home.

Just grab a plate, fill it up with a few bites of any salads that look interesting, then pay up and head over to their cafe to chow down. Make a note of the ones you like, then cruise back by the salad bar while you’re shopping, and add the ingredients for your favorites to your list.

Voila! One-stop inspiration and implementation. Of course, not all of Whole Foods’ salads bowl me over, but I’ve definitely found some keepers this way. (In fact, I plan on making their green bean caesar salad for Veggie Quest soon.)

Bonus: You won’t be hungry while you grocery shop, so you won’t be as likely to impulse-buy fourteen-bean soup mix or Peruvian macaroni and cheese with grated mango, or whatever other random item seems like a great idea at the time, which will then proceed to sit in your pantry for the next four years until it expires.

In the meantime, since I’ve been so busy, I’ve decided that June is the new May, and I’ll be extending National Salad Month for a couple more weeks. That way I’ll have time to post the rest of my promised salad goodies. So keep an eye out for news of the salad weird, and how to whip up a killer vinaigrette with whatever ingredients you have handy. They’re coming—eventually!