While cooking, listen to this: 24K Magic by Bruno Mars

I've been told I'm a great salad maker. It's a weird thing to be proud of, but damn am I proud of it. If there's one that gets a bad rap it's salads. I think the American food system has made people associate salads with sad iceberg lettuce, pieces of purple cabbage and mushy tomatoes doused in ranch or Thousand Island dressing.

Sad, indeed.

Now you, savvy reader, probably know better than to associate salads with bowls of wilting lettuce. If you've been following along for a bit, you'll know that we encourage salad creativity and love to add unexpected ingredients - like pomegranates and coconut bacon - to our salads. My family isn't the most food savvy. My mom's a pretty good cook, but my dad is still convinced that this blog is vegan (insert eye-roll emoji here). When it comes to salads, we rarely ventured outside of the box. But when I moved to New York, I started experimenting with different salad bases - everything from Brussels sprouts and cabbage to kale and butter lettuce. Sometimes no lettuce is an option. No matter what base I use, I'm determined to make it creative - I want to rid things like cabbage of their bad reputations and remind everyone that these vegetables bring all kinds of flavor to your mouth.

That's where this salad comes in. There's this thing in Detroit called a Tommy salad that most Detroiters know about - it's basically a Greek salad with dill and celery drizzled with a creamy Greek dressing. It's blissfully delicious and a favorite of my grandma's. With that salad in mind, I dug through my vegetable crisper in search of whatever I had on hand. I had two huge heads of cabbage that seemed endless no matter how many recipes I used them for and a bunch of dill from a pickle experiment failure. Plus nonstop onions from our CSA.

And so, this salad was born. Crunchy, satisfying and just the right kind of filling, it allows for creativity (as almost all of my salads do) and would be great topped with pomegranate seeds, chickpeas or avocado (or all three!). Drizzled with a tahini dressing from my girl Kate over at Cookie + Kate, you've got yourself a winner. Just remember, not all salads are sad salads. Some can be even more flavorful than your favorite meat dish. So test this one out on your favorite meat-eater. If they like Cole slaw, they're bound to like this Greek spin on it.

Not to toot my own horn (but toot it I shall!), I'd say my Salad Queen reputation lives on! Now onto teaching my dad the difference between vegan and vegetarian...

xo, Alyssa

Greek Cabbage Slaw

Yield: about 6 servings

Cook Time: 15-20m

Category: Salads

Source: dressing from Cookie + Kate

Ingredients

salad:

4 cups of shredded green cabbage

4 cups of shredded purple cabbage

1 bunch of dill, finely chopped

1 thinly sliced red onion

1 diced green pepper

3-4 stalks of celery, chopped

¼ cup crumbled feta

¼ cup salted, roasted sunflower or pumpkin seeds

Optional add-ins: thinly sliced cucumber, avocado, chick peas, diced tomato

dressing:

¼ cup tahina

3 Tablespoons lemon juice (1 to 1 ½ lemons)

1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 medium clove garlic, pressed or minced

½ teaspoon Dijon mustard

2 Tablespoons water

¼ teaspoon fine sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Instructions

Chop the cabbage into ribbons. Feel free to buy pre-choped cabbage, if that's easier.

Combine chopped veggies with cabbage in a large bowl.

To make dressing, mix all ingredients in a bowl with a fork or whisk. You can also use a food processor, if that's easier for you - I'm just lazy.

Add dressing to chopped veggies and toss to combine.

Before serving, add feta and any optional add-ons.

To keep: this salad keeps well in the fridge for a few days, you just might want to liven it up with some olive oil and vinegar or lemon juice before serving.