If you have a more adventurous palate for salads, here's a good one that is cheap, tasty, unusual, and if prepared correctly, quite elegant.

The basic formula is celery, green apples, and Parmesan cheese with a little salt, pepper, olive oil, and lemon juice. It's a very light Italian salad, but could be varied with say, cider vinegar instead of lemon juice and some red pepper flakes. I suppose you could also make it a mayo salad if you want, but then you are adding calories and heaviness to the salad, which it doesn't really need.

You can chop up the ingredients any which way, but if you can manage to slice everything razor thin, it can look quite elegant!