Today’s lunch brought forth a question: At what point does a salad have too many different ingredients? Our salad contained spinach, random mixed greens, sliced muenster cheese, diced mushrooms, strawberries, chopped carrots, tomato wedges, potato shrapnel and hard-boiled egg fragments, to name a few. In total mass, the extras (non leafy food matter) outweighed the spinach and mixed greens, so we’re pushing the envelope. It went over OK, though—no negative comments made, no food cases of food poisoning found, and the salad was completely consumed.

But seriously, when does a salad, through overzealous preparation, cease being a “salad” and assume some other moniker? What do you call it? We’d love to know over here because we’re heading in that direction.

Really, do labels even matter? Check out these ideas for blowing away old thinking and ushering in a new age of saladry:

Perhaps, instead of applying dressing to the salad, we will apply salad to the dressing—asking guests “what sort of salad would you like with your dressing?” Our guest, seasoned to jungle[8]’s revolutionary meal-preparation tactics, selects the autumn greens collection, dumping a leafy tong-ful on top of a plate of evenly spread goddess dressing.

Or, salads could be blended into liquid form, challenging the notion that salads need be enjoyed with forks. Can you imagine all the flavors of a great salad in drinkable form?
Outlandish? Perhaps. Gourmet for sure.

The salad could also be a spiritual experience, in the native American sense of the word. The leftovers could be left out in the sun to dry for several days, then ground up and smoked with a handmade (with recyclable recycled materials, of course) jungle[8] salad peace-pipe.

These are just a few ideas we’ve come up with. At jungle[8] we’re always trying to revolt against accepted food conventions, traditions and norms, blazing our own trail through the food preparation universe.