Cook This: 3 recipes from Every Salad Ever, including grilled chicken souvlaki with a double-duty marinade

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Our cookbook of the week is Every Salad Ever by award-winning author Greta Podleski of Looneyspoons fame.

Jump to the recipes: Grilled Chicken Souvlaki Salad, Berry Delicious Summer Salad and Italian Chopped Salad.

Salads have come a long way since Greta Podleski borrowed her mom’s Ford Granada on high school lunch breaks and hit the Wendy’s all-you-can-eat salad bar with friends in St. Thomas, Ont. As much as she appreciated the chopped romaine, unlimited toppings and bottled dressings, those 1980s salad days are in the rearview mirror.

“Welcome to the new era of salads — you’re going to love it here,” the Sarnia, Ont.-based author writes in her sixth self-published cookbook and second solo effort, Every Salad Ever (One Spoon Media Inc., 2025).

Signalling a significant shift in what salads can be, grains, greens, pasta, beans, classics, “in-betweens” and embellishments, including toppers and protein marinades, fill the pages. There’s no shortage of homemade dressings, but you won’t find Greta’s teenage salad bar staple.

“You have apple cider vinaigrette. You have white balsamic. You have dark balsamic. You have sesame-ginger. You have peanut. You have Italian. You have ranch. I have no Catalina, though,” says Greta, laughing. “I haven’t figured out how to duplicate Catalina, but I’m not sure I’d want to. However, I would still probably like the Wendy’s salad bar with Catalina. I bet I would still love it. It would bring me back to my high school days. It’s just that I’m trying to level up my salads a little bit in 2025.”

Greta is a longtime salad lover who believes most people are the same. They just want more ideas and inspiration. “How many times have you been told by a friend, ‘Oh, just bring a salad.’ And then everybody goes into Panicsville, ‘What do you mean, just bring a salad?! What kind of salad? Leafy salad, pasta salad, green salad, bean salad. What am I supposed to bring?'”

With more than 100 recipes, Greta set out to prove that “for every season and every reason, there’s a salad for you.” In contrast to the simple and basic salads of her youth, today, the options are limitless. In Every Salad Ever, she put her imagination to work, “keeping the ingredients accessible and the recipes doable, and that’s the key. I would never want to write a cookbook that people open and say, ‘Oh, I wish someone would make that for me.’ I don’t want that aspirational type of cookbook that sits on the coffee table that people love looking at, but they’re never cooking from.”

Greta attributes her cookbooks’ success to their attainability. In Every Salad Ever, each recipe has a full-page photo and “Sound Bite,” a QR code linking to one- to two-minute audio clips of Greta sharing additional details, “like mini podcasts.” When readers contact her with questions about recipes, she’s the one who answers them.

After three decades of writing cookbooks, readers feel like they know her. “I always say I’m the furthest thing from a food snob. I like everything, and I think people pick that up when they deal with me, when they meet me, when they read my books.”

Starting with Looneyspoons, the 1996 cookbook Greta wrote with her sister, Janet Podleski, all her books have been No. 1 national bestsellers — an accomplishment she doesn’t take for granted.

Initially, the sisters self-published out of necessity, bolstered by the dream that Looneyspoons would be a hit. “We felt like we didn’t have anything to lose back then. We dropped everything, and we were so broke. At one point, I think I had $1.12 in my bank account. And that’s not a joke.”

With each title, the sisters built connections with booksellers and a reputation for putting out bestsellers. When Greta went solo with Yum and Yummer in 2017, she had no doubt she would self-publish it — she just didn’t know how she would pull it off without staff. “But you know, you do what you have to do, and sometimes you have to be Superwoman when you’re running your own business.”

Three decades after her first experience with self-publishing, Greta is “thrilled” that people still love cookbooks. “I was a little bit worried with book No. 6. There’s so much free online and Instagram and everything, so many influencers, and are people going to want a hardcover book in 2025? And I think the answer is a resounding yes for me.”

Playing the dual role of author and publisher, Greta signed an exclusive deal with Indigo for Every Salad Ever. She set her first print run aside for the retailer, anticipating it would last well into the fall, maybe even until Christmas. In just seven weeks, her warehouse was empty.

Though she can’t disclose quantities, Greta says they’re “huge by any standard.” When we spoke, she was on her way to oversee an “emergency” print run at Transcontinental Printing in Beauceville, Que. “It’s important to me to produce an excellent book, and so somehow I feel it’s going to be better if I’m there supervising and eating poutine.”

In June, Indigo agreed to support the sale of the book at independent booksellers and extended its exclusive to Dec. 31. “Indigo refers to my sales as ‘wild.’ That’s the word they keep using. And I’m like, ‘I’m okay with wild.’ But I was nervous about the partnership because I’d never done it. Now it’s truly one of the best decisions I’ve ever made,” says Greta.

“I’m a Canadian publisher. I print in Canada, and I’m selling through a Canadian retailer. So, it truly was a made-in-Canada story that people really embraced because they have been so supportive of the book.”

GRILLED CHICKEN SOUVLAKI SALAD

With Double-Duty, Doubly Delicious Marinade

Makes: 6 servings

Marinade/dressing:
1/2 cup plain 0 per cent Greek yogurt
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tbsp liquid honey
1 tbsp minced fresh dill
2 tsp Dijon mustard
2 tsp minced garlic
2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp grated lemon zest
1/2 tsp sweet paprika
1/2 tsp each sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

4 large boneless skinless chicken breasts (about 2 lbs/907 g)

Salad:
2 medium heads romaine lettuce, chopped
2 cups diced English cucumbers
2 cups halved or quartered cherry tomatoes
1 large red onion, thinly sliced
1 cup cubed light or regular feta cheese (4 oz/113 g)
3/4 cup pitted Kalamata olives

Step 1

In a small bowl, whisk together all marinade ingredients until well blended. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

Step 2

Cut chicken into 1 1/2-inch chunks and place in a large, resealable freezer bag. Add half the marinade. Seal bag and turn several times to coat chicken with marinade. Refrigerate at least 8 hours or overnight for the best flavour. Refrigerate remaining marinade to use as the salad dressing.

Step 3

Preheat grill to medium-high heat. Prep all salad ingredients and place them in a large serving bowl so they’re ready to go. Thread chicken onto skewers (discard the used marinade). Gah! I hate this part. Kinda messy.

Step 4

Lightly oil grill racks. Place skewers onto racks and grill for 10 to 12 minutes, turning occasionally to ensure even cooking. Remove from grill, slide cooked chicken off skewers and add them to the salad. Pour reserved dressing over salad and mix well using tongs. Serve immediately.

Switch it up: Trade the romaine lettuce for any type of salad greens you love.

Jazz it up: Thickly slice the red onion and grill the rings with the chicken skewers. Delish!

BERRY DELICIOUS SUMMER SALAD

With Honey-Dijon Vinaigrette

Makes: 6 side-dish servings

Salad:
1 pkg (5 oz/142 g) mixed greens (see note)
1 1/2 cups sliced fresh strawberries
1 cup fresh blueberries
1/2 cup walnut pieces
1/2 cup crumbled light or regular feta cheese (2 oz/57g)
1/3 cup very thinly sliced red onions

Dressing:
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tbsp liquid honey
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1/8 tsp each sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Step 1

Place all salad ingredients in a large bowl and set aside.

Step 2

In a small bowl or measuring cup, whisk together all dressing ingredients until well blended. Pour dressing over salad, using as much or as little dressing as you like. It’s up to you! Toss salad with tongs until all ingredients are well coated with dressing. Serve immediately. (Greens go soggy quickly, so it’s best to dress this salad right before serving.)

Note: This basically amounts to a few giant handfuls of greens. It’s hard to measure greens in cups, so just fill up a really big salad bowl with your favourite leafy greens.

Swap it: For a vegan salad, replace the feta with diced avocados and the honey with pure maple syrup.

Top it: Tastes great with maple-roasted pecans!

ITALIAN CHOPPED SALAD

With a Bright and Bold Red Wine Vinaigrette

Makes: about 12 cups salad

Dressing:
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 tbsp light mayonnaise
1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tbsp pure maple syrup or liquid honey
1 tbsp minced shallots
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Salad:
6 cups chopped iceberg or romaine lettuce
4 oz (113 g) diced salami
4 oz (113 g) diced Provolone or aged white cheddar cheese
1 1/2 cups quartered grape or cherry tomatoes
1 1/2 cups diced English cucumbers
1 cup diced yellow bell peppers
1 cup no-salt-added canned chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup pitted Kalamata olives
1/2 cup chopped radicchio
1/3 cup thinly sliced red onions
1/3 cup freshly grated or shaved Parmesan cheese

Step 1

Whisk together all dressing ingredients in a small bowl or shake them up in a mason jar. If you own a single-serve blender, whirl the ingredients to make the dressing extra silky. Refrigerate dressing until ready to use.

Step 2

Combine all salad ingredients except Parmesan in a very large serving bowl. Add dressing and mix well. Add the Parmesan just before serving, either mixed into the salad or sprinkled over individual servings.

Swap it: I personally LOVE aged white cheddar in this recipe, but mini bocconcini would also work well.

Top it: If you’re a fan of nippy pepperoncini peppers, chop two or three and sprinkle them over the salad before serving.

Recipes and images reprinted with permission from Every Salad Ever by Greta Podleski.

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