Salad is my love language. You may have read about other, more common love languages — gifts, words of affirmation, quality time, et cetera. I have no qualms with any of those . . . they’re all great. But salad is at the top of the list.

Fortunately (for everyone involved) my husband has come to understand and accept this fact. And although I happily embrace the role of primary salad-maker in our relationship, and although, left to his own devices, he might tend toward more carnivorous languages, he will, from time to time, make me a salad. I respond with adoring eyes and exclamations of, “You love me!”

Thus are there many interesting salads that make the rounds in our home. Ideally these involve freshly made dressing, as it just can’t be beat. When I’m on duty, I have historically made the dressing separate from the salad, then married the two right before serving. What intrigues me about my husband’s method, though, is that (in a dishes-and-time-and-mess-saving move) he makes the dressing right in the salad bowl, before adding anything else. Revelation.

I recently began experimenting with this approach myself. If I’m not mistaken, I have improved a bit on his ingredients and ratios (don’t tell him). But, at core, it’s a wonderfully simple technique, which can be adapted to myriad different ingredients, yielding fast and fantastic results, regardless of what you have on hand. So you can and should get creative! But here follows one example to get you started.

The secret to this particular salad is to chop all of the vegetables roughly the same size — hence a “chopped salad” — and to use sweeter vegetables to offset the beautiful tang of the goat cheese in the dressing. The entire thing can be prepared about ten to twenty minutes before serving to allow the vegetables to marinate. (And if you’re not otherwise occupied,  you should consider using those ten to twenty minutes to pan-fry some steak or chicken in a mix of butter and olive oil over over medium-high heat, preferably in a cast iron skillet, to be served atop the salad).

Incidentally, this all pairs excellently with a glass of 
”Ranch Water”  — that is: tequila, sparkling water, and lime or lemon juice — a convenient fact to keep in mind if you happen to know anyone who claims tequila as a love language.