One of the local supermarkets here has a salad bar so I can make my own-one side is an olive bar, I guess, as there are close to eighteen or so different kinds of olives. I'm not used to seeing olives when they're not surrounded by martinis-some of them are kinda ugly and none of them look anything like the ones that come in the little jars with the dot of red, pimento I think, jammed into 'em. I've never been able to figure out what gets taken out of those olives to make room for the pimento, and don't even start me on the why behind doing it in the first place .
Anyway, The other side has the salad fixings (and the sneeze guard! What would this wordl be like without a salad bar sneeze guard?) to include some ingredients in which I have less than zero interest even though I've never had them...Beets are not something I have ever wished to try, but I don't have a reason, I'm sure I've never even eaten them. They've done nothing to me and they're supposed to be rich in vitamins and I'm still not impressed. I'm a beet bigot and that's all there is to it. The salad bar also has pieces of lobster without the shell. I'm not a big lobster eater so I stay clear of that. And there's oodles of different noodles all over the place and all cold--not a big fan of those.
I stick with the reliables: lettuce, spinach leaves, arugula, tomatoes (the store uses those 'grape' tomatoes as opposed to normal size ones. Who likes eating doll food?) and peppers, mostly slices of green ones but the other colors as well (sehr bunte mischung). My daughter told me all peppers start out as green peppers which not only impressed me (she's a college girl, like you didn't already know that) but dismayed me a little since I can no longer claim she gets her brains from me.
The last time I went crazy on salads for lunch (months ago) I was fooling myself. I was actually OD'ing on salad dressing, and the salad gave me something to put it on. I've contemplated microwaving a small bowl of just dressing and eating it like soup. I know, pathetic; but I haven't. This time around I'm putting into the salad two kinds of chicken pieces, one of them is all dusted in red powder and is, I suppose, the salad bar's idea of 'buffalo wings' and the other chicken pieces are naked, so I avert my eyes while eating them.
I've eaten enough salad in the last month and a half to have developed buck teeth and longer and pointier ears (not to mention a shiny coat), but in terms of the effect on my blood sugar and cholesterol, the results are amazing. So much so that my endocrinologist has radically reduced my diabetes medications making me and my wallet smile. Well, it did until the New York Daily News offered me this bon mot about the dietary preferences of Nicholas Cage. Now you can go ahead and make your goofy joke.
-bill kenny
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