Recipes! Salads galore: Cava-Inspired Salad Bowl, White Bean and Bread Salad, Green Goddess Chopped Salad and more!

What to cook during the week ahead, from Post Food editors.

Do salads have a season? It's a question for the ages. Certainly plenty of us make and eat them year-round, but let's face it: Summer is their time to shine.

We didn't set out to have multiple writers intersect around the idea of salads this week, just when temperatures hit records and summer officially began, but looking at the recipes we published, it sure seems like it. Great minds and all that, right?

I'm filling in on this newsletter for Becky Krystal, who is on vacation. And for me, salads represent the kind of celebration of bounty I associate with my garden, with farmers markets, with my sister and brother-in-law's homestead in Maine, and with … Sweetgreen and Cava, two by-the-bowl chains that began in D.C. Cava has been my favorite fast-casual spot for years now. It also happens to be one of the few places that my husband and teenage son like as much as I do, and I'll take any chance I can get or us to eat together (or at least get food without having to make more than one stop).

I developed this Cava-Style Salad Bowl With Spicy Feta with my husband in mind, because he is so in love with their balsamic-date vinaigrette that I swear he would drink it by the glass. My recipe-as-homage also shows you how to make a jalapeño-feta dip inspired by Cava's Crazy Feta and a baked version of their fried pita wedges. You can toss the salad like you normally might, or you can act like you're at Cava and assemble it with each of the topping ingredients (spiced chickpeas, olives, tomatoes, cucumber and pickled onions) in its own separate mound. I served it that way for a friend's dinner party, and it was gorgeous.

My salad involves a little knife work, but what if you just don't have it in you? Columnist Ellie Krieger comes to the rescue with one of the recipes from Yasmin Fahr's new book, "Cook Simply, Live Fully," that takes all of 15 minutes – and involves exactly zero chopping. The Warm White Bean and Bread Salad demonstrates Fahr's idea of "lap dinners," recipes that can easily be downscaled to serve one – and can be eaten on the sofa while you're bingeing a favorite show. (My obsession of late: "Under the Bridge.")

Salads, of course, are incredibly riff-able: Start with what you've got on hand, and adjust as needed. That's the spirit behind Julia Turshen's Green Goddess Chopped Salad With Shrimp, a Tex-Mex-inspired take that she represents her conviction that chopped salads can be "a catchall." As she writes, "I love chopped salads because anything can go in them."

Is salad perfect, in fact? Emily Heil thinks it can be, especially when paired with her idea of the perfect meal: A Caesar salad, fries and a martini.

Even our writers who didn't think they were writing about salads this week actually kind of were. Olga Massov gave you a helpful guide to poaching chicken breasts, and guess what poached chicken breasts are so good on? Aaron Hutcherson wrote about a recipe for Lamb Pita Sandwiches With Tzatziki; empty that filling into a bowl, tear the pita into strips, drizzle with the tzatziki, and what do you have? You know what you have.

To paraphrase the movie title, salads are anytime, anywhere, all at once. Why don't you tell us about your go-to summer salads, or ask questions about them or anything else on your mind? Join Becky and Aaron for their weekly live chat with readers; submit your questions in advance here. Becky will see you next week!