Oh, and I wasn’t thinking of it before because my brain was on summer mode, but my favorite salad (and one of my favorite foods period) is my family’s Easter dandelion salad:
1 grocery bag full of dandelion greens
4 hard-boiled eggs
1.5 potatoes, boiled
1 onion
1.5 lb bacon
6 oz apple cider vinegar
0.5 cup sugar
Pick the dandelion early in the spring, before it blooms. Clean the dandelion thoroughly (this is the most time-consuming part), and chop into pieces around an inch long. Dice the eggs, potatoes, and onion, and mix with the greens. Then, chop the bacon and fry it up, keeping the grease in the pan. When the bacon is fried, add in the vinegar and sugar and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Pour the dressing, still hot, over the salad, stir or toss, and serve immediately. It’s also good cold and leftover, but it’s best at the first serving when the dressing is still hot.
Out of season, you can substitute endive for the dandelion, and for vegetarians, you can replace the bacon with any other saturated fat. But this is the best version.