Salads for Days

As the semester is coming to an end, I am getting ready to finish out the first half with a bang...(in the sense of food).  This past weekend was extremely busy - there were no eggs on Saturday, so I opted for a bowl of granola for breakfast with some fruit...which was yummy, but when it came time for lunch - I needed a hearty meal.  Myself and a couple of friends decided to take a lunch break at Bloomingfoods, the local co-op healthy grocery by College Mall in Bloomington.  I walked into the store and straight to the salad bar, where my eyes bulged at the delicious choices that were awaiting me.  I took a brown cardboard take-out box and began to fill it with the food that was set out in front of me.  I lined the bottom of the box with 3 tong-fulls of crisp, spring-mix lettuce (a mix of dark green and red leaves).  Then I moved on to the fresh vegetables, where I scooped up a spoonful of shelled, light green edamame beans and sprinkled them over the bed of leaves.  Then two bright redish purple vegetables caught my eye - dark red chopped beets, I put a tiny helping on my salad and light purple seasoned onions which I piled on top of the other ingredients.  I tossed a heaping portion of shredded carrots and sliced red, green and yellow peppers on top of the other vegetables...the box was starting to get heavy as I shifted the weight in between my hands.  Then for protein I went straight to the "deli bar" section of the salad bar where I found my favorite kind - tofu!  I chose a couple pieces of Thai seasoned tofu and placed them around the outer border of the square container of salad and then I saw the tofu tomato sauce gumbo, which looked unreal.  I took a large spoonful and topped it off on top of my salad.  I finished off my masterpiece with many steamed vegetables.  I could not wait to start eating.  I opened the box and dug into a box of flavors.  At first taste I could not stop eating, each bite was better than the next.  The crunch of the leaves and the peppers as they mixed with the firm bites of the tofu.  The saucy gumbo worked well with the pungent flavor of the onions.  I continued to eat, bite after bite, as my food selection got smaller.  10 minutes later, I looked down at the bottom of the cardboard box to see it picked clean and I smiled with a feeling of satisfaction - another great lunch in the city of Bloomington.