Meatless Salad

Believe it or not, this is the first salad I've made as a part of my Meatless Month!
I was a vegetarian over a decade (*sigh*) ago when I was in my last years of high school and into University. I ate so much salad that when I went back to my carnivore ways, I declared that I had eaten enough salad for a lifetime. And I still stick by that declaration! Sure, I indulge and have a salad every once in a while but they are full-on, jam packed salads that would make a foodie proud. I was just so sick of your plain lettuce-tomato-cucumber salad that seem to appear in every restaurant and dorm cafeteria buffet.

This salad contains no lettuce. Well...actually it sits on a bed of lettuce, but the actual heart of the salad is a mixture of veggies that include:

• chickpeas
• avocado
• pepper
• tomato
• cucumber

The dressing was the juice of one lemon and a few generous drizzles of olive oil finished with salt and pepper. It's that simple and very delicious! I also bought a package of imitation crab (actually pollock, another kind of fish) for some additional protein.

What I love about making salads is that it's very much free form. You can't have "too much" of a certain vegetables. Love avocado? Go crazy! Love tomatoes? Knock yourself out! There's no...imbalance of ingredients. Sure, you may want to adjust your dressing (if needed) a bit but generally you decide how the rules go as you go along.

Nom nom nom