Hello! Well, it’s been dreadfully long since my last post- but I just had to take a two month break. Since the rice dishes in May, I’ve gotten a new job, a new apartment, new roommates, a new immigrant status … it’s safe to say I’ve been a little overwhelmed.

But now I’m back and- wow -just in time to close out the first year of OntheFly Recipes! Anyway, I thought it would bring a nice balance to the year if I offset the winter soups with some summer salads, so here we go…

Salads make me crazy. I love a good salad, but wouldn’t you know that the whole time I was living in Singapore, they were virtually impossible to find. Eventually some nice specialty salad shops started opening up, but at 10 SGD+ a pop (& with no meat), it would kind of blow the lunch budget. Consequently, I started making a lot of them, but Singapore is not a land of pre-packaged produce- so you’re not going to get any help in the form of bagged, pre-mixed, pre-chopped lettuce and certainly no cute little bags of shaved or julienned carrots. And making an elaborate side-salad starting with a fresh head of lettuce and onwards, well- that could turn one of my 30-minute meals into an hour and a half.

Then, enter Amsterdam. This may be the land of bread and cheese [and windmills and tulips and, ahem, other things] but it’s also a great land of sandwiches and SALADS. Not only can you find a decent salad in every [food-serving] bar and restaurant in this town, but you can also get really killer totally prepared, total-meal salads at the grocery store (albiet, with potatoes) for a whopping €3. No breaking the bank for lunch on that one.

However, that’s still not good enough for the Dutch. Even with these beautiful, easy options in front of them, the Dutch still take the time to create these elaborate, gourmet salads- for lunch. Well, maybe it’s not the Dutch so much, maybe it’s just my kooky office, but nevertheless, I am inspired and have given myself a new challenge: not only will every salad this month be a full meal, but it must also be so quickly and easily prepared, that I can make it at work, on my lunch break. Deal? Cool.

~Happy Chopping!

photos: busbeytheelder, elvissa, FotoosVanRobin, sualk61