BEST SALAD EVER

I've been trying to bully my chef husband into writing up some of his easy go-to recipes so I could post them here, but he seems to be what I guess you'd call an "intuitive" chef (at least when cooking at home.) Which means that extracting specific amounts out of him is nearly impossible, because he doesn't understand how someone could need that. Even though I need that. Which he should know, because whenever I have to apply my own oil and vinegar to something, I fuck it up and text him to complain. But anyway, I tried my best because I really wanted to share this salad with you.

Let me tell you about this salad.

It's the best goddamn salad ever. 

I am not what you would call an enthusiastic eater of salads. I hate the way lettuce tastes, and I'm very neurotic sensitive to textures when it comes to veggies (example: the crunch of snap peas is okay, the crunch of bean sprouts is disgusting.) But this salad? I will hoover it up like it's made of sweet, sweet oxygen.

It's really all about the strawberries, goat cheese, and balsamic, which are three flavors that probably live in a new-agey three-way marriage where they all love each other very much because they are so freakin' perfect for each other that I can't stand to imagine it any other way. The lettuce is really just a canvas- a nice boring surface to cut the intensity and add a little crunch. It's kind of like when you wrap a dog's medicine in cheese to trick them into eating it, except the medicine in this case is "vegetables."

But enough jabber.

The Best Salad Ever 

Makes about 2 servings

• 3 leaves of Romaine lettuce, washed and chopped up 
• 5 strawberries, beheaded and sliced 
• "Some crumbles" of goat cheese (I'd estimate a heaping tablespoon? Travis was not helpful here.) 
• "A drizzle" of olive oil (extra virgin, none of that promiscuous stuff) 
• "A few splashes" of balsamic vinegar (yeah, vague, I know. If you have a favorite balsamic vinaigrette recipe you could probably sub that in instead of the oil and vinegar.) 
• A small pinch of salt 
• Optional: some chopped candied walnuts. We often leave this out because they're not super cheap, as ingredients go, and you don't really NEED them, but they're tasty. 

Mix that shit together. Eat it. Marvel at the fact that most of the things in it are actually pretty healthy.