Curious about salad. Yes, really.

willboywonder

Same. Salad was a huge part of my meals growing up, for all dinners and most lunches. Occasionally, we had a kale salad as a side at breakfast. Sometimes, salad was the whole meal. No surprise to me, because it can fill you up.

hesn92

I don't really remember a lot of my meals growing up. My mom has never had any interest in cooking. I ate a lot of Mcdonalds and pizza and frozen things growing up. Sometimes my dad would grill steak or something like that and my mom would make baked potatoes and asparagus. Salads happened sometimes but not every night, no. I grew up in the midwest USA.

I currently don't eat salads very often either, as an adult with a family of my own. Typically just a vegetable with dinner. I will do salads every now and then and I typically eat them with dinner or after. I'm just lazy. Salad is one more thing and I don't want to do it. I'm not crazy about salad.

kali31337

While my mom may have had a salad occasionally, I never ate it because I didn't eat (and still don't) lettuce. She tried when I was younger but I couldn't eat it. Since I was the oldest, she just got used to never serving it to the whole family.

Now that I'm older, I love a good salad as long as it's with spinach. I rarely use it as a side to my meal but make it the actual meal.

I'm from Western PA. Oh and because I think it's relevant to where we are from, my mom's go-to salad is one with steak fries, mandarin oranges, ranch, plus a protein.

juliemouse83

Italian on my dad's side, Polish on Mom's. We ate salad at every meal, with every meal, unless we ate at my dad's parents' house, and then salad was served first. I sure miss those days.

lilawolf

lemurcat2 wrote: »

gremloBBPT wrote: »

My curiosity is probably odd, lol, but I'm genuinely curious about this...

1. Growing up, did you have a lettuce-based salad with your dinners at home on most/all days?
2. Was it served before, with, or after dinner?
3. What country did you grow up in? (And if your ancestors were from a different country, were your salad-eating habits from that culture?)

1. No. We had it regularly, but not with every dinner. We had non starchy veg as a substantial part of all dinners (about half the plate) and sometimes it was salad (salad was served in a separate bowl, however), and sometimes we had a cooked veg + salad also, but we often had just the cooked veg. (We also always had a starch of some sort -- corn, bread, rice, potato -- and meat.)
2. It was served with dinner. (Unless at a restaurant, in which case it would be before.)
3. The US, and my family has been midwestern Americans for a long time.

Almost exactly this

workinonit1956

My family is Italian, I grew up in central NY. We always had salad with dinner (lettuce, tomato, celery, carrots dressed with oil and vinegar, onion and garlic powder. We ate it after the meal.

SuzySunshine99

When I was a kid in the U.S. Midwest region, we did not have salads with our regular meals, just cooked vegetables as side dishes.

However, if we had people over for holidays or birthday parties, my mom would sometimes make a big salad, but it depended on who was coming over.

Greek side of the family, ALWAYS a Greek salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, feta cheese, olives. Served with dinner.
German side of the family, usually no salad.

This started to change when we were teenagers...my parents started serving more salads with our regular meals. Now, I notice they always eat salads with their meals and always serve it when they are hosting guests as well.

nooshi713

Growing up, we had salad most days but not every day. I’m America born but my mom is from Sweden and my dad is from Iran and for some reason, we always had salad after the meal. I don’t think this is cultural though, just their preference.

We had lettuce based salad before American or Italian food. We ate Persian food half the time and would usually have cucumber salad with that. I took the following recipe from PersianMama.com but my family makes it the same way. Shirazi salad:

sammidelvecchio

We never had salad. Always a veggie served with dinner, but never a salad. Although, every time we went to Ponderosa (a buffet/steak house we had in Ohio) my mom would always make us have a salad first before any other buffet items.

My mom was a salad freak, still is. I like them now, and have one for dinner very often. My ethnic background is mostly Italian, and part German. Second generation on both sides.

s_rivera_92

My mom is German and my dad is Polish and we almost always had a side salad with dinner (to be eaten with dinner) unless a big part of the meal was a vegetable. Like, if we were having gołąbki (cabbage rolls), we wouldn't have a salad. If we were having kielbasa and pierogi, we'd have sauerkraut, sauteed bell peppers, sauteed onions, and mashed potatoes with it... and MAYBE a salad. Salad was also a common lunch item.

brittanystebbins95

We had salad on occasion, sometimes with dinner, sometimes AS dinner. My family are all huge salad lovers so we always had it in the house. I would say I ate it maybe once or twice a week. I still do.
We do eat it before dinner if we go out to eat, though. Every single time. Even buffets.

hansep0012

Salad was a big deal in my family.

Every dinner, usually served first with french bread.

Making dressing was an art form and we each had our own unique specialty. Our grandfather's EVOO based dressing we still recreate and lovingly refer to it as "Popi Dressing".

It appears I will be the last generation that eats a salad each evening; my children and grandchildren do not find value / benefit in this tradition.

Second generation American from French-English on my mom's side and first generation Indian on my dad's side.

angelexperiment

My fam growing up yes before dinner, now I can’t get anyone to eat it so I quit wasting food lol. However we do have Doritos salad as the main one night a week typically cause it’s the only way most my fam will eat it. Now for formal holidays always a salad is served though us no one eats it but my mil. My background Irish/Dutch his background Irish/Cherokee

angelexperiment

@amusedmonkey I remember I sent my daughter to school with broccoli once and she got picked on for it, I was like but you love it! No mom I don’t want to be the weird veggie kid! Omg I wonder what kids do eat for lunch or bring these days. My kids say junk food snacks like little Debbie but no veg. Although this year the elementary stated they are changing what they are allowed to bring for lunch and a list of prohibited items. It was interesting, to say the least.

angelexperiment

lol though with my daughter that was probably 13 years ago

Treehugger_88

jenncornelsen wrote: »

No salad almost ever. Both my parents were born in canada, with grandparents from The netherlands and england

That's funny - I have the exact same heritage - parents born in Canada, one set of grandparents from Netherlands and the other from England, but we had a lettuce salad with dinner almost every night.

My mom said it was because she grew up really poor on a farm and her Dutch mom would always boil veggies from the farm to have with their meal and they never ate anything fresh. So my mom wanted to make sure there was always some fresh veg with our dinner. Her salad was always iceburg lettuce with cheese, bottled dressing and various combos of tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and carrots.