It’s dinner time, and in the center of the table the painted salad bowl is gloriously seated, proudly displaying its array of Romaine lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, and carrot. I serve myself, trying to get as many tomatoes as I can without taking too many. Forgoing salad dressing, I eat every bit of dry, slightly wilted lettuce and save the veggies on top for last.

Alternatively, the salad bowl might have contained coleslaw drowned in poppyseed dressing, another favorite in my childhood home. I liked coleslaw even less, although I ate it. I know it’s good for me. I avoided ever eating coleslaw leftover because it became mushy and sweet, instead of being crisp and sweet.

Part of my learning to cook journey has been learning what foods I really like, and what foods I just put up with. I’ve never been a picky eater, but through the experience of having my own kitchen I’ve learned that there are some things I just won’t revisit if I didn’t love it the first time. Over the last year, an inordinate amount of lettuce has gone bad in my fridge before I used it because I just didn’t know how to make a salad I liked.

A few months ago, however, I had a salad that I really enjoyed. It was a finely chopped kale and cabbage salad, featuring raisins and mandarin oranges, among other things. When I got home, I immediately looked up a recipe to make a similar salad (and have since made it twice). I felt accomplished when the result was delicious, and Nathaniel and I finished the whole bowl I made in less than a week.

YouTube for me has become an endless source of recipe inspiration, and videos are especially helpful because they show the end result visually in a way that is more helpful than photos. YouTube is where I got my second new favorite salad recipe, which I call the Green Green Salad because everything in it is green: parsley, cucumber, and green cabbage. Parsley, I have discovered, is surprisingly delicious.

Now I look forward to finding more creative ways to eat vegetables in salad form, and am thinking about trying a salad made primarily of parsley. Although I’m a little scared of that idea, because in my mind parsley is an herb, not a salad ingredient. I’ve been branching out with my cooking in other ways too, air frying brussel sprouts, pan frying shredded brussel sprouts with shredded sweet potato, and making homemade lemon ginger tea, among other things. As it turns out, homemade lemon ginger tea is very strong, and quite delicious, and brussel sprouts might be my new favorite vegetable.