Eat This Not That Part I

In my search for easy recipes, I ended up on quite a few emailing lists - Better Homes & Gardens, Food Network, Tastebook all have the privilege of spamming me. At work today, I was browsing through recipes for "Crisp Summer Salads" and I was shocked at what passed for a salad. The first "salad" - The Layered Spinach and Pot Sticker Salad - on the list included potstickers, strawberries and strawberry jam as ingredients. Then to add insult to injury, they tell you to whip up a recipe of "Spiced Chips". As is frozen chicken pot stickers weren't unhealthy enough. It isn't a salad just because it has spinach!

Next is the Southern Cobb Salad, and to it's credit, it looks like a salad. However, I don't even want to think about what constitutes the "cheese
dressing".

I'm terribly confused by the Smoked Salmon and Melon Salad. I guess it counts as fruit salad, but why I would mix salmon with cantaloupe, honeydew and blueberries I don't know.

There is even a Steak and Potato Salad - it consists of steak and potatoes on top of some lettuce. I imagine most guys presented with this dish would consider the lettuce to be a garnish, an afterthought. What is wrong with this picture?

Why does every salad they produce contain blue cheese, bacon bits, croutons, chips, crispy wontons, noodles, rice or some other unnecessary addition? Meanwhile, some of their salads contain only 1 or 2 actual vegetables. I love salads because they are tasty and filling and are low in calories. If you want steak and potatoes, you should just eat steak and potatoes and not pretend that your "salad" is going to make up for a day's worth of poor food choices.

Honestly, I plan on making some of these recipes, but very few of them really deserve the name "salad".