Oh how a girl yearns for a good salad. Or this girl anyway.

I spent some time in Chile this summer and with my extremely limited Spanish vocabulary, not to mention the fact that I am a vegetarian (most days), I thought I would play it safe early on in our trip and order a salad for lunch.

If you have spent any time in Chile, it won’t go unnoticed that Chileans have an obsession for hotdogs and ham and cheese everything. This can make it a little tricky for a vegetarian to find their way. The salad options at the restaurant near the apartment we had rented, were pretty basic. Basic in a foreign country is probably a good thing I thought to myself. I quickly decided on the avocado salad.

My lunch arrived shortly after, and to my surprise I was presented with a large plate of lonely sliced avocados that had clearly seen better days. Don’t get me wrong, I love avocados, but a salad they did not make. They were begging for the company of crisp lettuce, ripe tomato, sweet red onion and well, pretty much any other vegetable to keep them from their solitary debut as a salad.

I ate my humble lunch that day and knew that next time, I would be sure to order a side of salad with my avocados.

For me, a good salad starts with a delightful mix of lettuces that don’t resemble something I can pick from my overgrown back yard. The next step is typically a mindful concoction of what I am in the mood for and often consists of just ripe avocados, crisp sugar snap peas, wrinkly sun-dried tomatoes and overstuffed briny olives. Add a handful or two of flavored sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds and you have yourself a pretty decent salad.

The final touch and key to any good salad is in the dressing. Not necessarily the type, although that is important, but how much. A well dressed salad is like anything in life…less is more (unless you have a heaping bowl of chunky monkey ice cream in front of you that is).