Raise your hand if you love a good Caesar salad. (Me! I do!) I have many favorite salads, but Caesar salad has been a favorite for as long as I can remember. A great Caesar salad hits a satisfying balance between fresh and crisp, and creamy and cheesy.

The Caesar salad is a versatile one. It’s the perfect accompaniment to a generous bowl of soup or your favorite homemade Italian meal. It will also round out a special occasion—whether that’s a weekend dinner or a big holiday.

When I was expecting our baby, Grace, I started craving all of my creamy childhood favorites, ranging from baked potatoes to ranch dressing to crisp but creamy Caesar salads. Clearly, it was time to develop a proper Caesar salad recipe, and here it is.

This recipe combines my Caesar salad dressing (it’s so simple!) and simple homemade croutons with crisp romaine lettuce and a final sprinkling of additional Parmesan cheese. You’ll find the full recipe below, written from start to finish.

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Ever tried fattoush? Once you do, you’ll never forget it! Fattoush salad is a colorful Lebanese salad that’s bursting with fresh produce, lettuce and mint. It’s refreshing, crisp and satisfying.

Fattoush is the salad to make if you have random leftover fresh vegetables (radish, carrots, tomatoes, cucumber, etc.) and pita bread. You really can’t go wrong with the proportions here.

Simply tear up the pita and bake it with some olive oil and salt. You’ll end up with crisp, toasted Mediterranean croutons, otherwise known as baked pita chips.

Fattoush is the Lebanese solution for stale pita bread, much like French toast uses up stale bread. Isn’t it smart?

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This chopped Greek salad is crisp, fresh and overflowing with bold Greek flavors. You’ll see romaine lettuce, tomato, cucumber, bell pepper, Kalamata olives and feta cheese in my bowl. I opted for cherry tomatoes, since they’re delicious no matter what time of year.

Combined with crisp lettuce and a simple homemade Greek vinaigrette, you have a big, irresistible Greek salad.

Here’s my trick to making the best Greek salad: I chop the ingredients small. That way, you get maximum fresh flavor in every bite.

Authentic Greek salads often don’t contain greens. Greek salads at restaurants in the U.S. typically include awkward and distracting pieces of sad iceberg lettuce. This chopped version with fresh romaine is my favorite of them all!

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This colorful recipe has been slowly taking shape in my kitchen over the past few months. I’ve seen “Buddha bowls” all over the internet and menus lately, so I set out to make one.

What are Buddha bowls, though? How did whole-grain-and-veggie-bowls-with-tasty-sauce all become abbreviated as “Buddha bowls”?

I found some guidance in this Epicurious article by Katherine Sacks. In summary, Buddha carried a bowl with him on his journeys and accepted food as donations, which he would eat at the end of the day. Katherine also mentioned that Buddha bowls are similar to macrobiotic (macro) bowls with whole grains and steamed or raw veggies.

I created this versatile bowl with those factors in mind. This Buddha bowl recipe includes the five essential components: whole grains (brown rice), plant-based protein (edamame), veggies and greens (you have options), healthy fats (avocado), and a flavorful sauce to bring it all together (carrot-ginger).

It’s easy for Buddha bowl recipes to become complicated with the preparation of many different components, but I was careful to keep this recipe manageable. It’s unbelievably tasty and nutritious, too! I love eating leftovers all week long.

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Meet the next edition of my giant salad challenge! This “Mexican” green salad recipe is quite possibly the prettiest salad I’ve ever had the chance to photograph, too. Romaine lettuce and mixed spring greens, purple cabbage and cauliflower, cherry tomatoes, cucumber and red onion combine to create one stunning and delicious salad.

The idea behind the salad challenge is that I’m challenging you (and myself) to make an enormous green salad and some homemade dressing to go with it. If you store the salad and dressing separately in the refrigerator, you’ll have salad to last you all week long. I find that I eat a lot more greens and veggies this way, and I’m more likely to grab salad as a snack than a regrettable handful of chips.

I’ve enjoyed quite a few renditions of this salad over the past few months. It was inspired by a local restaurant called Taco Republic’s “Al Verde” salad, which includes Tuscan kale, roasted golden beets, and mayo-based dressing. I always get their salad to balance out the queso and chips I inevitably-but-not-regrettably order beforehand.

I ultimately decided on some ingredients that are a little easier to find at a regular grocery store and prepare for my salad. Freshly toasted pepitas offer a savory, nutty crunch, and creamy feta and avocado make this salad irresistible. This salad isn’t the quickest salad you’ll ever make, but it pays off in sheer quantity and flavor.

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Hello from Kansas City! I’m glad to be home with Cookie. We have a lot of snuggles to catch up on. I’m still mentally processing my post-cookbook Morocco vacation, but I’ll share more about it soon. I’m actually thinking about creating a separate travel/lifestyle section of the blog, with its own separate email list—would you be interested?

Today, I’m sharing my next giant salad challenge recipe—the idea being that you make the salad and dressing at the beginning of the week, and store them separately. That way, you can enjoy salad all week long! I loved your enthusiasm for the concept.

Here’s an enormous version of the little side salad with carrot-ginger dressing that you met a couple of weeks ago. It’s exactly what I’m craving after two weeks away from home.

This one’s full of leafy greens (you know those are healthy), cruciferous veggies (remarkable free radical fighters), and beta carotene-rich bell peppers and carrots. I added some cooked edamame (soy beans) for protein. Bottom line, it’s crisp and delicious and I think you should make it!

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I have a challenge for you (and me) today. I challenge us all to start making a giant fresh salad on Sundays, so we can eat salad all week long.

Starting with this gigantic, colorful, dare-I-say the best Italian chopped salad. This Italian chopped salad recipe is bold, vibrant and truly irresistible. It’s the perfect accompaniment to your favorite Italian meal, and it’s also a nice hearty salad on its own.

When you have a really great salad in the fridge, you might even reach for it before you grab the bag of chips. Happened to me! I’ve enjoyed four iterations of this salad over the past couple of weeks (especially the final version you see here), and I’m still craving more.

The motivation behind this salad recipe came when I ordered an Italian chopped salad and a pricy Neapolitan pizza down the street. I requested the chopped salad without the bacon, and it was definitely missing that salty, savory, gimme-more edge without it. Crispy bacon is the only meat I ever miss…

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Eep! I’m so excited about this recipe that I want to hit publish and share it with you right this minute. I know how much you enjoy spicy sweet potatoes, black beans and avocado together—you all have such good taste—and I’ve already been keeping this one under wraps for a few weeks now.

I should probably tell you the story behind these tostadas. A few months ago, I went on a fun girls’ weekend trip to Nashville with a couple of friends. We all share equal enthusiasm for good queso, margaritas and tacos.

Thanks to Yelp’s infinite wisdom, our hungry and thirsty selves landed at a restaurant called Bakersfield for a very late lunch. Apparently it is a small chain. There, we promptly ordered a pitcher of apple margaritas and some truly spectacular queso. I settled on the “papas,” their black bean tostadas, and some portobello tacos.

I loved how they served their tostadas on a bed of romaine lettuce. Tostadas are inherently tricky to eat. Do you pick them up? Try to break through the crispy tortilla with a knife? The romaine offered the perfect solution. Take a fork and knife to the tostadas, which is a lot easier to do with lettuce padding the underside. Plus, the romaine is crisp and fresh, which are two essential components to a great tostada (or taco, for that matter).

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I sure hope you all enjoy salads as much as I do. I wasn’t kidding when I said they’re all I want to eat this time of year. Since they’re all I want to eat, they’re all I want to make, and therefore, all I want to post on this vegetarian food blog of mine. Who’s in favor of more summer salads? Aye!

These beauties were heavily inspired by a salad at The Mixx here in Kansas City. It’s my favorite salad place, and I find myself there when I come home from a trip to an empty fridge. They always have a fun seasonal salad.

A couple of months ago, the seasonal option was a Mediterranean wedge salad with an olive relish and everything else you see here. It was fresh, delicious, and fun to eat, so I took a photo and jotted down the ingredients.

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See that salad? I just ate leftovers for breakfast. After my annual too-many potato chips session at the lake with my family, I’m craving fresh, bright, satisfyingly crunchy things. Surely I am not the only one!

I really want to tell you all about Oklahoma, and how the trees shrink into broccoli florets and the dirt turns red on that familiar drive south on I-35. I want to tell you about meeting my newest cousin and how she let me hold her for over an hour (maybe I hogged her a bit). And how extra-cute Cookie is after a few days apart. She’s snuggled up under my right elbow now.

I just got the manuscript back for my cookbook, so I have a busy week of editing and drinking too much coffee ahead of me. I can finally see the finish line. I’m excited to wrap it all up and get back to hanging out with you guys in the comments and on Instagram. I’ve really been missing you.

Anyway, this salad is inspired by one that I reached for at Trader Joe’s a couple of weeks ago. They call it the “Mega Crunchy Salad with a Bite.” I grabbed one of the last ones before they closed, so it wasn’t quite as crunchy as it should have been, but I recognized the potential.

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