By Rachel Hergett EBS COLUMNIST
Lettuce begin with a pun.
Terrible, I know, but I’ve got lettuce on the brain. I’ve gone down a rabbit hole in search of meaning, contemplating salad as a concept and the place of lettuce within it. This all started in a hospital recovery room in April, when the conversation naturally turned to health. My aunt inquired if I was eating well and my mom, still slightly groggy post knee replacement, stated simply, “you eat a lot of salads.”
She would know. Not too long prior, my mom kindly stocked her fridge before going on a pre-surgery vacation. They have a freezer full of game meat, so my grocery list was mainly salad kits and vegetables. I do eat a lot of salads. I have made it a near-daily practice to eat what I call a “big salad” for a meal, but these salads aren’t always what you might expect.
If someone says they had a salad for lunch, my brain automatically assumes it was some sort of lettuce-based salad, possibly with a slight expansion into other leafy greens. We’re talking a wedge, a Cobb, a Caesar, et cetera. Part of me still struggles to release the idea that a salad begins with lettuce. However, these are not the only salads in our lexicon. Far from it. There are fruit salads, bread salads, tuna salads, potato salads and—shout out to @thatmidwesternmom on Instagram for her continual deep dive into “Minnesota salads that aren’t really salads”—a whole host of Jell-o salads.
The word “salad” comes from Latin for “salted,” and was shortened from “herba salata,” or “salted vegetables,” a dish that was popular in Ancient Rome and featured greens dressed in a salt and vinegar brine. The idea of “dressing” ingredients remains true of all the aforementioned salads, even if the dressing is made from Cool Whip and Jell-o packets. Those examples also show us that traditional salad greens are no longer required. In Webster’s dictionary, a synonym for “salad” is “hodgepodge.” A salad can now be anything. “Salad is, literally and figuratively, what you make it,” Tanya Sichynsky wrote in the New York Times’ “The Veggie” newsletter in 2024.
Enter the big salad. This isn’t a single recipe; it’s a construct. My daily big salad is always changing. It’s based on mood, on taste, on what’s in the fridge and on what ingredients best fuel my body. Sorry, Minnesotans. That surely leaves out most mayonnaise and Jell-o based salads. A big salad is easy to construct, requiring little time or effort, and uses ingredients on hand.
Sometimes, I do start a big salad with a bagged, greens-based salad from the grocery store. These are seemingly complete with included dressings and toppings, and they fulfill the size requirement. But it is the stuff and not the lettuce that makes a big salad.
Those of us of a certain age may recall the term from the “Seinfeld” episode “The Big Salad,” where George buys Elaine a “big salad” to go and doesn’t get credit. Later in the season when a waitress questions her order, Elaine says, “It’s a salad, only bigger, with lots of stuff in it.”
This week, I used a Taylor Farms southwest salad as a base. It already has a cabbage, lettuce and cilantro mix and a cilantro dressing topped with tortilla strips and roasted pepitas. Not enough. I added cotija cheese, olives, cucumbers, tomatoes and leftover carne asada. That’s a big salad.
After a Costco run, I like to use a base of seaweed salad and Romaine hearts, incorporating things like shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, cucumbers, green onions, sesame seeds, almonds, mandarin oranges and, of course, rotisserie chicken into the big salad with some sort of sesame dressing.
My mom, now recovering from home, told me she thinks of the big salad as a veggie heavy Buddha bowl. It is a good way to use leftovers and douse things in her favorite dressings, like the ginger dressing from Wasabi in Bozeman that she buys by the tub.
Many of my best big salad concoctions have been all about variety, about layering flavors and textures with ingredients like nuts and seeds, whole grains, fresh or dried fruits, cooked and/or raw vegetables, meats and other proteins.
Other big salads are minimalist. Friends and family spent time on Crete last summer, and returned with Greek salad seasoning, touting the simplicity of the salads on the island. The most basic is in heavy rotation as a big salad. My version has cucumbers, tomatoes, feta cheese and Kalamata olives, plus the seasoning, salt, pepper, oil and vinegar.
My big salad creations reached new levels when I discovered the ideal vessel—a ceramic piece by local artist friend Ian Baldwin that I purchased from a studio sale. It is neither bowl nor plate, and somehow both. I call it a “blate.” The large, flat, plate-like bottom and squat curved sides would be perfect, I thought for one of my go-to potluck dishes: squash carpaccio. Then one day, probably due to the lack of clean dishes in my kitchen, I decided to use it for a big salad. Unlike a plate, the salad ingredients were contained and easily mixed, and unlike a bowl, ingredients on the bottom were accessible with the tines of a fork.
Lettuce recap: Physically, a big salad is big, has a lot of stuff, is covered in a dressing and is ideally served on a blate. Philosophically, it’s a portal for the imagination, expanding limits of what a salad can be. And personally, a big salad is a way to use leftovers and eat more vegetables—lettuce (sometimes) included.
Rachel Hergett is a foodie and cook from Montana. She is arts editor emeritus at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and has written for publications such as Food Network Magazine and Montana Quarterly. Rachel is also the host of the Magic Monday Show on KGLT-FM and teaches at Montana State University.
