Misfirings from my Neurons

Salad Days Du Jour Had three lunches/dinners out last week (two for an offsite course and one at our Smiths Aerospace Holiday Dinner) and I was wondering whether a new salad paradigm was happening. (I had heard something about a tomato shortage, so perhaps it was more too do with this, but bear with me... ) So, are dried cranberries the new tomato? And, are nuts the new croutons? Now the latter is troubling to me (aside from being allergic) because croutons are much better than nuts. Cranberries instead of tomatos is just odd...