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By Travis Gupton

The Selma Times-Journal

My wife has been helping me eat better over the last few months. Last week, she told me that in my lunch I had a sandwich and a salad with ranch dressing. I want to start off by saying that I really do not like salads. I started really getting into salads when I worked at Panera Bread in college and got to try their salads.My favorite was the strawberry walnut salad. When I was younger, my grandmother would make a salad for Sunday lunch. It would always have at a minimum: lettuce, cheese, tomatoes, and either croutons or bacon bits. That is the salad that I know and love.

Fast forward to my lunchtime. I open my lunch up and I see a pile of lettuce before me. No cheese. No tomato. No croutons. Just lettuce. I ate the pile of lettuce and then went home and my wife and I had a hilarious two-hour discussion on what we considered the perfect salad. I found in that conversation some people do not need as much in their salad as I do. There are different ways to make a salad and so many ingredients that can be added to a salad to make it specific. My mother always put cottage cheese and peaches on her salad. My grandfather always put salt and pepper on his salad even if it already had salt and pepper.

In my opinion, the more colorful a salad looks, the better the salad will be.

My perfect salad would have lettuce, tomato, olives, onion, tomato, eggs, cucumber, ham, bacon, banana peppers, bell peppers, croutons, and cheese.

I have met some people who love Ceaser salads more than regular tossed salads. I am actually in that boat too.

The reason I like a Ceaser better is probably most people like a Ceaser over any other salad, the dressing. No matter what is in the salad the dressing will make or break the salad, That is a big decision to make.

My usual go-to is Honey Mustard, but I have talked to a lot of people who seem to love Ranch. I would love to hear from you guys about what you like in your salads. Is there such a thing as too much or too little in a salad to you? Are there other kinds of salads that you like? We will have a post on our Facebook where you can comment on what is your perfect salad.

I know there are others who like salads in Selma, so let’s talk about it.