salad night redux

So several years ago we had this tradition at the newspaper. Every Wednesday night was "Salad Night" and a group of the copy editors (plus me) would bring one or two salad ingredients to work. We would then create a giant salad bar with whatever we had scrounged together, and we would all sit down and have a healthy dinner while catching up before deadline. It was always a really good time, and it got me to try a load of new vegetables that I would never have bought or prepared otherwise (like beets, for example).But then, as the newspaper business went down the shitter (sorry Dad -- that's the best way to describe it), management decided to eliminate most of the copy desk, and with only a few of us remaining there was a) not enough people left to make salad night work and b) not enough time to actually sit down and have dinner anyway. And this lovely tradition disappeared.Until tonight.A small group of us decided to reunite and catch up and have another go at it this evening, and man, was it good to see everyone together again. Just to give you an idea, here's what we had on hand: lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, tuna, salmon, cabbage coleslaw, chicken laab (thai spiced/marinated ground chicken -- sooooo good), chickpeas, almonds, olives, radishes, hummus, a loaf of fresh bread (and butter), cucumbers, smoked turkey and chips and salsa. Not a bad spread at all. Now, if we can only figure out how to keep this thing going...