lately i’ve been all about salads. salads for lunch, salads for dinner, i’d probably eat a salad for breakfast if i could incorporate granola and maple syrup with it. there’s just something about the simplicity of salads that makes them pretty much the best go-to meal when the last thing you want to do is turn on the stove and slave over a hot flame.

and talk about versatility… lay down a bed of spinach and the world is your oyster. in addition to the habitual mainstays of cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, and avocado, i’ve been trying to incorporate the fruit bounty prevalent this time of year. peaches, plums, apples, and strawberries have all adorned my rabbit food over the course of the past few weeks. but then i saw this photo from greenpeaspinkwine’s (don’t worry about it, just a stranger who i follow for food and fitness tips) instagram account:

via greenpeaspinkwine

and immediately, i was like, “oh hey, i need that in my belly now.” so i started reading the listed ingredients -all of which are completely raw seeing as little miss greenpeaspinkwine is currently in the midst of a 30-day raw food challenge (more power to her!), and one in particular stuck out. i’ll give you a hint of which one it was…it rhymes with pigs. 

that’s right, figs -which, according to wikipedia (my go-to source for everything, duh), aren’t only a byproduct of the ficus tree, but also a petite fruit rich in fiber, calcium and antioxidants. but really, nutrient-content aside, let’s be honest here, before i googled them, the extent of my fig knowledge was that they’re the main ingredient in figgy pudding which is the dessert we demand you bring us every december when we sing “we wish you a merry christmas.”  so following greenpeaspinkwine’s salad posting, and finding myself at trader joe’s yesterday, i threw caution to the salad-assembling wind and determined right then and there that the next fruit i would introduce to my spinach leaves would be the organic california black fig.

spinach meet fig. fig, spinach. charmed, i’m sure.

they seemed to get along swimmingly. as did the rest of my ingredients that i assembled for last night’s evening meal -kale, shredded carrots, sundried tomatoes, cucumbers, walnuts, avocado, roasted turkey, and homemade dijon balsamic vinaigrette (it’s fine, just being a gourmet chef over here).

my salad is gettin’ figgy with it.

it was one small step in salad assembling, but one giant leap for fig-kind.

and just like that, i’m a fig-liever. (which is kind of like a belieber, but not). 

anyway, if you’re looking to spruce up your salad with something a bit more exotic than your common fruity fare, might i suggest gettin’ figgy with it?

(thank you, will smith).