Welcome to StartCooking.com.

Hi, my name is Kathy Maister.

Today I'm going to show you how to make a vegetable salad.

Then we're going to add a few extras and turn it into a fabulous chef salad.

So go grab a knife, a cutting board, a vegetable peeler, a salad bowl, and we'll be ready to start cooking.

The basic ingredients I'm using

today are lettuce, a red pepper, two stalks of celery, some cherry tomatoes,

some green onion, a cucumber, and two carrots. The first step is to wash the

vegetables we're going to be using. We also need to peel the carrots and the

cucumbers. Remember always peel away from your body,

no matter what you're peeling. Now I'm going to chop the lettuce into bite-sized pieces.

The red pepper is first cut in half, then the stem and the seeds are removed. Now cut it into

strips and then it gets coarsely chopped. I have three different types of cucumbers. This little

one is called a pickling cucumber.

This one is called an English cucumber.

This is just a regular cucumber.

They all taste pretty much the same and they add a nice crunch to the salad.

I think I'll add the pickling cuke to my salad.

Next we're going to slice two carrots and add them to our salad.

We need to trim off the ends of the celery,

then slice the celery into about one quarter inch slices. Now for the tomatoes. I love cherry

tomatoes. Be sure to cut them in half or they tend to go flying across the room when you try

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