To sell her readers on vinaigrettes and dressings, Michele Jordan must first sell salad, and she does so with a poet's flair: "From a few leaves of just-picked lettuces damp with an evening's rain and a creamy frenzy of earthy potatoes napped in a velvety mayonnaise to a cool mound of silky rice noodles in a tart and fierty dressing, salads . . . keep us healthy, happy, and alive." Heather Weber During my many years in the ...