Salad is any of a wide variety of dishes, including vegetable salads; salads of legumes, eggs, or grains; mixed salads incorporating meat, poultry, or seafood; and fruit salads. They may include a mixture of cold and hot items, often including raw vegetables or fruits.

Green salads include leaf lettuce and leafy vegetables with a sauce or dressing. Most salads are served cold, although some, such as south German potato salad, are served warm.

Salads are generally served with a dressing, as well as various garnishes such as nuts or croutons, and sometimes with the addition of meat, fish, pasta, cheese, eggs, or whole grains.

Salads may be served at any point during a meal, such as:

The word "salad" comes from the French salade of the same meaning, from the Latin salata (salty), from sal (salt). In English, the word first appears as "salad" or "sallet" in the 14th century.

Salt is associated with salad because vegetables were seasoned with brine or salty oil-and-vinegar dressings during Roman times.

James Trevor "Jamie" Oliver, MBE (born 27 May 1975) is an English chef, restaurateur and media personality, known for his food-focused television shows, cookbooks and more recently his campaign against the use of processed foods in national schools. He strives to improve unhealthy diets and poor cooking habits in the United Kingdom and the United States. Jamie Oliver's speciality is Italian cuisine, although he has a broad international repertoire.

Jamie Oliver was brought up in Clavering, Essex, England. His parents ran a pub, "The Cricketers", where he used to practise in the kitchen. He was educated at Newport Free Grammar School. He left school at age sixteen without qualifications and went on to attend Westminster Kingsway College, formerly Westminster College. He then earned a City & Guilds NVQ in home economics.

His first job was as a pastry chef at Antonio Carluccio's Neal's Yard restaurant, where he first gained experience with preparing Italian cuisine, and developed a relationship with his 'mentor' Gennaro Contaldo. Oliver then moved to The River Café, Fulham, as a sous chef.

Sarah Carey is a former Esat Telecom employee and former columnist for The Sunday Timesand The Irish Times. She is currently a radio presenter on Newstalk and has presented for TV3. She resigned from The Irish Times in March 2011 after an appearance on national television during which she defended leaking information from the Moriarty Tribunal about political donations from Denis O'Brien to Irish political parties.

Carey has a degree in History from Trinity College, Dublin and a post-graduate diploma in Business Studies from the Michael Smurfit Business School in University College Dublin. She has performed freelance PR/marketing work for a number of companies and the political party Fine Gael. She has also worked for Esat Digifone.

In 2002, she began writing the blog GUBU, "An Irish woman’s social, political and domestic commentary". Then Sunday Times Irish Editor Fiona McHugh, offered Carey a column after reading the blog. The Sunday Times column ended when she started writing a weekly opinion column for The Irish Times in 2008. The blog also ended in 2008.

Salad Fingers is a post-apocalyptic psychological horror Flash cartoon series originally created by British cartoonist David Firth in July 2004. It gained rapid internet popularity in 2005. The San Francisco Chronicle ranked it in the "Top 10" pop culture phenomena for that year.

The cartoon revolves around the eponymous Salad Fingers, a thin, green, mentally troubled man who inhabits a desolate world. Already a well-known Flash animation series available on the internet, Salad Fingers premiered in Australia at the 2007 Sydney Underground Film Festival at the Factory Theatre. The first seven episodes were shown back to back, along with a variety of other animated short films, during the "Re-Animation" session.

The eerie music featured in the background is the tune "Beware the Friendly Stranger" by Boards of Canada. The dark music in the soundtrack that appears when Salad Fingers is scared is actually Firth playing the guitar, slowed down and reversed. Other music included in Salad Fingers episodes includes work credited to Brian Eno, Sigur Rós, Aphex Twin and Lustmord. David Firth frequently inserts references to Aphex Twin in his flash cartoons; for example, the Aphex Twin logo can be found on the telephone in Salad Fingers episode five. Firth has also cited the works of David Lynch, South Park, Tim Burton, The League of Gentlemen, and Chris Morris as sources of inspiration.

A Caesar salad is a salad of romaine lettuce and croutons dressed with parmesan cheese, lemon juice, olive oil, egg, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, and black pepper. It may be prepared tableside.

The salad's creation is generally attributed to restaurateur Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant who operated restaurants in Mexico and the United States. Cardini was living in San Diego but also working in Tijuana where he avoided the restrictions of Prohibition. His daughter Rosa (1928–2003) recounted that her father invented the dish when a Fourth of July 1924 rush depleted the kitchen's supplies. Cardini made do with what he had, adding the dramatic flair of the table-side tossing "by the chef." A number of Cardini's staff have claimed to have invented the dish.

Julia Child claimed to have eaten a Caesar salad at Cardini's restaurant when she was a child in the 1920s. Nonetheless, the earliest contemporary documentation of Caesar Salad is from a 1946 Los Angeles restaurant menu, twenty years after the 1924 origin asserted by the Cardinis.