Salads From The Archives

First off, a retraction: I said last week that my Thanksgiving salad didn’t go over too well, but my dad (GFP as he’s affectionately known here on the blog) has since told me that not only did he like it, but my parents’ little cat Gypsy even tried some:

Haha, what a cutie!

ANYways, I hope you’re not sick of salads yet, because I have more for you today. Long before there was the gf-gf, I had a now-forgotten food blog that featured a lot of blurry pictures of salad. And in case you’re looking for a laugh, I thought I’d share some here, and show the evolution of both my salad eating and picture taking.

You’ll notice that my salads always had to have a theme, unlike my new random salad philosophy – I’ve got a pretty good idea of what was on each of these salads, the dressings I used, what I ate with them, because I ate the same things all the time. Boring!

So without much further ado …

Greek salad on a wrap: arugula, olives, tomato, cucumber, and red onion. I probably dressed it with lemon juice and olive oil. And there was probably some hummus on the tortilla, because even then I loved to combine Mediterranean and Middle Eastern flavors.

My attempt at recreating a Chipotle chicken salad: grilled chicken, sauteed green pepper and onion, pico de gallo and guacamole on spinach. Actually this one sounds really good.

And this is basically my favorite warm fall salad but on cold greens – bacon, goat cheese, and roasted beets. I think I used honey mustard dressing on this one.

And I’m surprised I don’t have a picture of what was my favorite salad at the time – roasted zucchini and onions on cold spinach. I probably ate it twice a week all summer that summer.

Moving on … this is from last spring, and I obviously still hadn’t figured out a darn thing about food photography …

That was a taco salad with chipotle beef, tomato, yellow bell pepper … and I can’t even tell what else under all that flash!

A taco salad that I ate last week had mostly the same ingredients, but it looks pretty different and a lot more appetizing …

And in case you’re wondering, yes, I have been using a puzzle as my picture background lately. GFBF and I have been working on this puzzle for weeks and finally finished it! We’re too proud of ourselves to pack it up and put it away, so it’s been living on the table where I take most of my photos, and I decided to see how it looked as a background

What have you learned about making salads? Or about food photography? Do you use any unconventional backgrounds?