Friday - A Briefer Synopsis

SALAD

I remember as a kid riding my bike after school with friends to Pizza Hut. Nothing unusual about a pack of 13 year old kids descending on a pizza parlour. But on this day I don't remember if they were running a price special, or they had recently introduced this new element, or that this bar was there all along, and some friends said it's good. Whatever the reason, I discovered this new thing called an "All You Can Eat Salad Bar!" I piled up a plate of salad which included virtually every known vegetable (and pizza, of course). I remember it was delicious...but, it was only a salad!

We had salads at home with dinner usually, but it consisted of iceberg lettuce, slices of cucumber, radishes, and cherry tomatoes (which my brother hated - I'll never forget how my father "assisted" my brother in eating his cherry tomato after a 20 minute stand-off with my mother), all in a small wooden bowl and smothered in Thousand Island dressing. But this salad bar had everything. I ate so much salad that I could not finish my pizza. I remember that that day I realized that a salad could be a meal, not just a requisite pre-dinner tradition.

People often tell me that there is no way they could eat salad everyday. Why? People eat burgers, or pizza, or fried chicken everyday. They do it because it tastes good. Plus, you don't want to eat a salad everyday, fine, Vbites has an entire stock of healthy food alternatives. But, salad has a connotation that screams less filling. Not true!

So, Friday, I built a giant bowl of salad - not in a nice wooden one like my father picked up in Thailand during the war, rather a large stainless steal bowl that a bachelor would use for either a salad, or giant bowl of cereal, or fill with pretzels during a party, or even use as a water bowl if his buddy and his Rottweiler come over for a visit.

Lettuce, carrots, cucumber, tomatoes, broccoli (it was also at Pizza Hut that I realized I really liked broccoli - in my mind if a vegetable came from Mom's kitchen it was gross, but from a pizza parlour it was delicious), and red/orange/green peppers, mushrooms, avocado, chickpeas, kidney beans, radishes, and flax seeds which are an excellent source for needed Omega 3's which are also found in fish. All with some balsamic dressing very lightly poured on.

How great a feeling to have your belly full, and your taste buds satisfied, and knowing that what you just ate will greatly nourish your body.

Salad, it's a meal! Build your own, build what you like, it tastes good and is good for you --- just lay off the tub of bleu cheese dressing.