Garbage Salad

You're hard pressed to find something called a garbage salad outside the Chicagoland area.  The rest of the country calls it a chopped salad.

As delicious and diverse as it is, that's really all it is:  a chopped salad, made with whatever you have in your refrigerator/pantry at any given time.  And because your groceries are always different, your salad is never the same twice.  There are no rules--anything goes--the only constants are these:  iceberg or romaine lettuce (sometimes both), some kind of salami, and an oil and vinegar based dressing.

The ingredients are limitless, it can be as big or as small as you want, you're in charge.  Yes, I said it:  you're in charge here, it's up to you, you're the boss.  You're limited only by your imagination and your leftovers.  Now please hurry up and start chopping before I try to jump back in the drivers seat...  :)

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This salad isn't before the meal, it IS the meal, so you want to make it hearty enough to sustain you.  There are just as many chopped ingredients as there is lettuce.

In the salad above, I used:
romaine lettuce
Italian hard salami
grape tomatoes
swiss cheese, chopped into cubes
Spanish green olives
black Kalamata olives
carrots
garbanzo beans
crumbs from the bottom of a bag of Snyders mustard pretzels
kosher salt/cracked black pepper
grated fresh pecorino-romano cheese on top

If my salad ends up being very savory, I like to add something sweet like raisins or dried cranberries.  If I don't have any, like today, I will add honey to my vinaigrette.

Vinaigrette:
I use a 2:1 ratio
2 parts red wine vinegar, 1 part olive oil, a teaspoon Dijon mustard, pinch dried Italian Seasoning (honey for sweetness, if desired.  YES, PLEASE!).  Whisk and pour over salad

Grate fresh pecorino romano cheese over the top and serve--