The Tyranny of Lettuce

I just made a salad. And then laughed alone with it.

Ahahaha! Spinach!

Which brings me to the subject of oddly-specific tumblrs that make me laugh. If it's not Women Laughing Alone With Salad, then it has to be Nick Clegg Looking Sad. Which brings me back to salad. (It actually doesn't, but I wanted to talk about salad some more).

I have very strong feelings about salad.* As a vegan, I get given salad a lot. I go to restaurants, and waiters helpfully suggest that I can have the chicken salad without the chicken. And the dressing. And the bacon. And the cheese. Because obviously, as a vegan, I am supposed to consider a R45 bowl of lettuce with a single cherry tomato a satisfying meal.

But even if I weren't the sort of vegan who considers people who eat only half a slab of chocolate at a time to have far too much self control, I would have strong feelings about salad. Here is why.

Lettuce. Is. Not. A. Salad.**
 

Not a salad.

If I wanted to eat crunchy water, I would eat ice. And it would still be a better salad. There are so many interesting salad leaves in the world! There's rocket and watercress and bok choy and green cabbage and purple cabbage and baby spinach and even grown-up spinach, all of which make a better salad base than lettuce. So even if you are going to go the single cherry tomato route, you're off to a better start.

But of course, you don't have to go the single cherry tomato route. Salads are the muffins of the vegetable world. You can put anything you like in a salad. Anything you like.*** And if that doesn't fill you with a sense of infinite possibility, I can't help you.

When you consider that the world is full of chickpeas and beetroot and apples and spring onions and raisins and nuts and seeds and broccoli and cauliflower and cucumber and tomato and lentils and sprouts and zucchini and carrots and avocados and peppers and strawberries and gherkins and radishes and celery and leeks and butternut and sweetcorn and asparagus and nectarines, even laughing with your friends can't make lettuce any less sad.

Not least because it means your friends are the sort of people who eat lettuce and call it salad.


*I have strong feelings about food more than is probably normal.
**Unless you speak a language in which they are, in fact, synonymous. But even then, that's no excuse.
***Ok, maybe not things like bicycles and skyscrapers. But it's really up to you and the strength of your teeth.