You Don't Win Friends With Salad

Homer Simpson was right about this, as in so many other things.

I’m one of those notionsy people who likes a good brunch, so the other day I took myself down to a local café that specialises in brunches. The avocado toast with feta cheese was a tasty morsel indeed.

But that’s exactly what it was. A morsel. What you might call a neat slice of bread, surrounded on all sides by salad. I was being palmed off with salad.

That’s what these places do. Order a slice of quiche or a toasted sandwich and two thirds of the plate will be covered with salad.

I think I could cope with salad if it wasn’t for the leaves. Lettuce leaves in particular. I feel as if I’m eating grass. And if I wanted to eat grass, I’d be a horse.

In The Simpsons, when Lisa was turning vegetarian, her dad Homer advised her that ‘you don’t win friends with salad.’ Then Bart turned this mantra into a song, and they all danced around the kitchen singing it – apart from Lisa.

That sentiment is a lot less true now. Gone are the days when Irish people shuddered at salad.  There’s a lot more variety in the salad world now – lovely colourful vegetables and exotic ingredients like feta cheese and walnuts.

Photo by Anna Pelzer on Unsplash

Photo Description: A white bowl holds a salad featuring a riot of colourful fruit and vegetables, including avocado, watermelon, tomatoes and red onion.

But I’m still not won over. Salad just doesn’t reach the place in my soul which is truly satisfied by food. Maybe because salad is usually served cold. Or maybe because it carries certain echoes.

I can see my father eating your classic 90s salad. Hardboiled egg. Curled up slice of ham. A daub of coleslaw. Corrugated beetroot. And hillocks of lettuce.

He mixes it all up in a glorious mess and smathers it on brown bread. A splodge of it lands on his cheek.

And when I see a plate of salad, I am reminded that he’s no longer here to eat it.