Cobb Salad

I heart Cobb salad. Big time! I could eat it just about any day, seriously. What's not to love about a salad that is full of rockin' ingredients like bacon and blue cheese, has a tasty dressing, and still counts as healthy since it also contains the likes of lettuce and tomatoes? Mmmm mmm!

My obsession with Cobb salad started when my little brother was in junior high and studied the 30's in English class. For a project he researched and made Cobb salad. While I know my dad had made it beforehand at some point, this particular instance made it a classic in my family's dinner repertoire, and thus my own.

According to Wikipedia, a fine source of truthful information on the Internet (ha!), there are two stories to how the Cobb salad came about:

• In 1937, Brown Derby owner Robert H. Cobb went into the restaurant's kitchen to fix a late-night snack for Sid Grauman, operator of Grauman's Chinese Theater. He browsed the refrigerator for ingredients, and chopped them up finely. Thus, the Cobb salad was born. From then on, Grauman often requested that a Cobb salad be prepared for him. Word soon spread about this creation throughout Hollywood, quickly increasing its popularity. It became such a hit that film stars started requesting "Cobb's salad", and it was eventually added to the menu of the Drake Hotel.
• Robert Cobb's widow told a different story. Cobb came to work after a difficult dentist appointment and asked his head chef to prepare something he could eat. The chef made up a salad of ingredients he knew Cobb would like and chopped it up finely. Cobb liked it and added it to his menu.

Either way, this salad came from the late 30's and has been hot ever since.

Please note that you can adjust proportions to your wishes.. Like my slim wedge of chopped onions above. :)

Serves: Approximately 4-5 (maybe? I'm not really sure.. Eyeball it!)

Ingredients
In my opinion the Cobb salad has 8 essential ingredients, although if you Googled a Cobb salad recipe you'd get a pretty random set. Here's my Official list of those 8 ingredients:

1. Bacon
2. Hard-boiled eggs
3. Chicken
4. Avocados
5. Tomatoes
6. Red onions
7. Roquefort or blue cheese
8. Lettuce

The dressing ingredient list is also specific:

• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 juiced lemon
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• black pepper
• 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 tsp dry English mustard
• I usually end up using regular yellow mustard since I don't own any for whatever reason
• 1 clove (or less) fresh minced garlic
• 2 tbsp olive oil

Preparation 
Make sure everything is appropriately cooked and chopped depending on the ingredient.

Put lettuce in a large bowl. Place each ingredient side-by-side on top of the lettuce in a pizza-slice-like arrangement. This makes for a great presentation. Drizzle dressing on top.

Mix it all together and serve.