Make your own salad dressings -- they are one-third the cost of brand-name dressings.

To keep a vegetable salad fresh, it must stand before serving, place an inverted saucer in bottom of bowl before filling with salad.

Wash salad vegetables before storing. It saves time and spoilage as they are easier to use when you are preparing a meal and you tend to use them more often.

Want a quick salad dressing - Blend a cup of curd with little lime juice and seasoning and toss the salad into it.

Want to decorate a salad - Use hollowed halves of orange, grapefruit or melon halves for perfect salad and dessert bowls.

Any salad tastes better and crisp if the vegetables have been soaked in chilled water for a while.

For good home-made sprouted lentils follow the following steps:

• Soak lentils in lots of water overnight.
• In the morning, drain water and wash by draining and adding water 2-3 times. Do not rub. Finally drain all water.
• Cover and keep in warm dark place.
• At night add water and drain out.
• Cover and keep again as before.
• By morning 3/4 long sprouts are ready.
• Preferably use a porous container e.g. an Earthen pot for best results.

Store all sprouts in a cool, moist place to keep them crisp. They're a tasty, very healthy ingredient for salads.

If you are making an apple and banana fruit salad, add a pinch of crushed mustard seeds. It will prevent the fruits from turning black and also help retain their flavour.

Salads can be made very very decorative, by using normally discarded skins of apples, peas, cucumbers,etc.

Good apple peels can be included in a salad or eaten as is, since they are storehouses of vitamins and fibre.

Though salads taste best fresh and crunchy, one may prepare dressing ahead of time, and chop nondiscolouring or wasting ingredients, like oranges, sweetlimes, veggies, etc. hours ahead and finish off in a jiffy at the time required.