Love 'em or hate 'em.. salads

Love 'em or hate 'em

… salads

Defined as …. “a cold dish of vegetables or herbs (either raw or pre-cooked) generally mixed, with or without oil and vinegar or other dressing, sometimes including egg, meat, fish etc.” This is a kind and generous definition!

If you mention the word “salad” it conjures up different images for different people.

If you are of a certain age, as an example, there's a vision of a limp lettuce leaf, a slice of boiled egg – ditto of tomato and lets not forget cucumber. Traditionally, this not so tasty morsel was served – I use the term loosely – on Saturday or Sunday “teatime”. If you were expecting visitors for tea and wanted to really push the boat out then you'd add a tin of pink salmon, bones and all!

I remember saying that I was scarred for life from the buffet experience in the 70ies. My recollections of salad for tea come a very close second.

You have to bear in mind that in those days no-one had heard of such exotic ingredients like avocado let alone served on a salad plate.

We are creatures of habit and cold food means warm weather, sadly in the UK our weather is so unpredictable – how many times have you planned to eat al fresco and been relegated indoors, drenched and freezing! May be our aversion to salads emanates from lousy weather.

One bad habit we have is we don't take enough time to enjoy our food – “graze” is not a particularly attractive word – I can't help but see a field full of cows – but food should be savoured and enjoyed over a period of time, so perhaps we need to go back to basics and change our perception of “salad”.

In the coming posts we'll explore and see if we can turn the tide a little and revive our tired salad brains.