Farm-fresh salads: flavorful, nutritious, and incredibly versatile

Farm-Fresh Salad Perfection

If we could eliminate three words from the English language, we’d get rid of these: “just a salad.” When you create a salad from simple, delicious, farm-fresh ingredients, “just” doesn’t enter into the equation!

Salads are incredibly versatile and they:

• Make mouth-watering main entrées
• Serve as the perfect side dishes
• Stretch easily to turn a side dish into a full meal
• Are packed with nutrition: vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber
• Serve as a perfect prep-ahead meal to take to work or school
• Are quick and easy to make
• Allow you to fill up on low calorie food so you’ll eat less

“The beauty of salads,” Chef Jamie Simpson from the Culinary Vegetable Institute shares, “is that the farmer has already done nearly all the work for you. Plus, you can add different toppings each time to make your salad a uniquely wonderful taste experience.”

To help, we’ve created a seasonal salad box so that you can enjoy the absolute best of the season, year-round. It’s perfectly curated, no matter the time of year, with exactly the right amount of farm fresh greens and other veggies. Here, you can find combinations of seasonal salad ingredients and four flavorful salad dressing recipes. 

History of Salads

People have appreciated salads throughout the centuries, although they didn’t always use that name. According to Encyclopedia.com, Ancient Greeks and Romans appreciated raw vegetable dishes that were dressed with a mixture of oil, vinegar, and herbs. Benefits of enjoying salads, Pliny the Elder noted about 2,000 years ago, included how you “needed no fire for cooking and saved fuel” and how they were “always ready.”

Ancient Greek physicians Galen and Hippocrates believed that such dishes should be served first in a meal while others disagreed, saying they should be the last course. (Our opinion? Whatever works!)

In the first century C.E. a writer named Marcus Apicius shared recipes, including a dressing of “celery seed, pennyroyal, mint, ginger, coriander, raisins, honey, vinegar, olive oil, and white wine” that was then poured over a bread salad that also contained chicken, cheese, veggies, nuts, and more. Fast forwarding to 1470, salad choices might include “boiled endive, borage, or bugloss with a vinaigrette seasoned with calamint and mint parsley” or “purslane with a vinaigrette seasoned with onions.”

A variety of salads were served in France, England, and other places in Europe and more over the centuries—but it wasn’t until 1883, when Emma Ewing published her cookbook, Salad and Salad Making, that they gained significant momentum in the United States. In 1896, the lettuce and tomato salad was made popular through Fannie Merritt Farmer's Boston Cooking School Cook Book—and, after that, the lovely salad has only continued to become a bigger part of family meals.

Salad Recipes

Here are a few from our site:

• Kohlrabi and Apple Salad
• Arugula Salad
• Chef Garden’s Salad
• Mixed Green Salad with Shaved Root Vegetables
• Kale Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad

Perhaps the best part about making a salad is its versatility. You can include ingredients you love, from your choice of greens to toppings to dressings and more—and then use this formula:

Experiment.

Eat.

Enjoy.

Repeat.