Salads are the staple of the season, whether you'd call this late spring or early summer. Radishes, green onions, and lettuce are hitting their stride. This is probably the last week for watercress until cooler fall weather. The spicy dark green leaves and little white flowers make a delightful addition to lettuce's fluorescent chartreuse.
Choose from an array of baked goods, from almond coffee cake to fried pies and dessert breads. Take your Mamma some locally roasted coffee, goat milk soaps, or artisan crafts when you celebrate Mother's Day. Save the dishes and buy some barbecue. The weather is warm and perfect for planting. You'll find herbs, flowers, tomato, and pepper plants at the DeKalb Farmers Market in Smithville behind Ace Hardware.
Salads can be much more than the familiar and ubiquitous iceburg lettuce. Lettuce and other greens range in color from deep red to green with purple streaks and range in taste from the mild to the spicy. Combine frilly leaves with Romaine types that have a thick crunchy stem. Include edible flowers, like the yellow flowers of bolting kale or mustards, violets, nasturtiums, or pansies and take the color palette from blasé to dazzling.
Keep your salads interesting by making your own salad dressings. Easy and fast, homemade dressings are healthier and tastier than anything you can buy in the store. Using basic ingredients, you can create a variety of dressings.
A favorite on our farm is a creamy, sweet, and tangy dressing that goes especially nicely on spicy watercress salad. Dissolve a couple tablespoons of honey in the same amount of lemon juice. Add a quarter cup of Greek yogurt, sour cream, or a combination of the two. Drizzle in a tablespoon or so of olive oil, add a dash of salt, and mix until combined. Use a blender, or just combine all the ingredients in a jar and shake until everything is thoroughly mixed. 
Another easy dressing that works well on any kind of salad only has three ingredients, plus a dash of salt. Combine equal parts sorghum and balsamic vinegar with two parts olive oil, and that dash of salt. Shake or blend until emulsified.
If you have more jars of jelly or jam than you know what to do with, use them in a sweet salad dressing. Dissolve some jelly or jam in an equal amount of balsamic or apple cider vinegar. Add two parts olive oil and shake, shake, shake. If you just have the scrapings left of a few different kinds of jam, put them all together and use for this recipe. Raspberry and blackberry jams work especially well for this type of dressing.
The combination of peanut butter and ginger makes for a Thai-inspired dressing that always impresses dinner guests. In a blender, combine all ingredients: one inch chunk of peeled ginger, half-cup apple juice, two tablespoons peanut butter, two tablespoons apple cider vinegar, one teaspoon sorghum or maple syrup, one teaspoon soy sauce or Bragg's amino acids, and a couple tablespoons olive oil. Blend until thoroughly combined. Tweak the flavors to adjust to your palette. I know that combination of ingredients may sound strange, but I have never had someone taste this dressing and not love it.
You can always fall back on a simple vinaigrette. Whether it's cucumbers and tomatoes or lettuce and watercress, a vinaigrette is a great dressing. Choose from red wine, white wine, apple cider, or balsamic vinegar. Combine with two to three parts extra virgin olive oil or grapeseed oil. Shake until emulsified and enjoy.
Once you start experimenting with your own salad dressings, you'll be hard pressed to go back to store-bought fare. Use the ingredients you have on hand to create variety so you can enjoy salads with every meal.