Salad Time!

When it comes to salad options, there is no shortage of fun, filling, and delicious recipes for plant-based dining.

The recipe for the ranch salad with buffalo tempeh pictured above comes from Isa Chandra's site. It is filling and--equally as important--packed full of flavor.

One of my favorite recipe books is Salad Samurai, by Terry Hope Romero. With a variety of hearty options, and organized by season (so that the produce you use in each salad is at its best) this book really has it all. I've yet to be disappointed with a recipe. Some are certainly more time intensive than others, but all yield extremely satisfying results. I brought the blueberry tamari greens bowl to a work party and it was a smash hit, and I've made the green curry lentil quinoa salad for a gluten-free friend (delicious!). More recently I made the smokehouse chickpea salad, which my husband and I devoured. Many of her recipes call for the use of a grill or cast iron grill pan--and these are some of my favorites: the roasted corn salad with avocado is the perfect summer salad, the fiery fruit and quinoa salad kind of blew my mind, and the pesto cauliflower and potato salad? Incredible!