Have you ever scored a pickup at a salad bar?  It can happen.  Flattering lighting, arrays of exotic beauties calling for a closer look. Taking them all in with your eyes and finally choosing one to take home.  Once you score, you’ll find yourself hanging out at the salad bar more and more often… and maybe venturing to the hot foods bar, the olive bar, the ceviche bar and on and on.

With a focus on cooking for one or two, it is easy to get hooked on the salad bar scene.  No need to worry about planning for leftovers, pick up something fresh in a useable amount and enjoy.  It is a nice way to get variety in your side dishes and concentrate on a great main dish. It makes mealtime a pleasure instead of a chore and sure beats take out fast food or yet another sandwich supper.

For example…

A craving for cruciforms, but not for whole heads of cauliflower, romanesco or broccoli is satisfied by a few florets of each from the salad bar. Take them home, roast them on a sheet pan and your side dish delimma is solved.

Florets of cauliflower, romanesco (a green cauliflower) and broccoli pan roasted in the oven provided a healthy fiber-rich side dish without a ton of leftovers in the crisper.  Since the oven was hot, a small oven-roasted sirloin steak was a wonderful main dish treat. A bonus was the discovery of a watermelon, feta, mint and jalapeño salad that could not be passed up!  What more could a salad barfly ask?

And on another night at the salad bar…

Sometimes, it is hard to decide between two toothsome beauties, so take them both home and enjoy!  Rainbow carrots with a mix of kale and radicchio were terrific with a light vinaigrette.   And the house rule of three tiny roasted potatoes provided the starch for the meal.

Rainbow carrots atop kale and radicchio brighten up a steak and potatoes supper. By the way, steak is not an every night protein here.