Marinated tomato, avocado and mozzarella salad

For me, eating salad is usually tinged with regret. Obviously it feels good to eat healthily, but there's always that slight resentment that everyone else in the staff room is munching on thick sandwiches or leftover pasta for lunch while I have a tub of limp lettuce. But not with this salad! I took a big tub of this to work and happily worked my through the whole lot without any jealousy of other people's lunches (apart from maybe the leftover Chinese take away...).

In fact, the chocolate truffle that I was offered after I'd finished genuinely didn't taste as good as this salad (what? I obviously wasn't going to turn down a truffle, don't be silly). Perhaps if I take a lunch like this with me every day, I'll finally be able to resist the big boxes of biscuits and cupcakes that are inevitably available in every school staff room.

This salad is the perfect thing to make a big batch of on a Sunday evening to take for lunches through the week. It took mere minutes to throw together, and tasted just as good the next day as it did when fresh. Stick it on a bed of leaves and have a piece of fruit at the side, and you've got yourself a filling meal.

You can adapt this recipe however you see fit, depending on what you have in your fridge. Any salad-type vegetables would fit well, and some fresh herbs would work really nicely too. I wouldn't omit the spring onion, though - despite there only being one small onion in two large portions, it adds such a huge punch of flavour to the dressing and helps the vegetables to come alive.

I never thought I'd enjoy a salad this much.