Beauty that rivals taste

Sometimes I feel like all I do is rip off other people's ideas. What's the quote, "I'm not original, I'm resourceful"? Yeah. That. Maybe originality is overrated. I don't know. Anyway, I was talking the other day with someone about salads, and thought, "Salads. That's a great idea." And so, a few days later, when it was 90 degrees and I could not be paid to turn my oven on, a salad graced our dinner table.

Now, there is nothing particularly "original" about this salad. Salads in our household are made in much the same way I make my soups, which is to say, with whatever needs to be used up in the refrigerator, but I just happened to have a particularly harmonious group of ingredients lying around. I started with a mix of spring greens, topped with paper thin slices of strawberries and cucumbers, followed by chopped coconut, avocado, shrimp, and some fresh Greek basil, then drizzled with a lite raspberry vinaigrette and accompanied by "homemade croutons" (or, ummm...the last bit of stale baguette coated with butter and garlic powder and stuck under the toaster oven's broiler for a few minutes.) This salad's beauty quite rivals its taste.