For those of you in Michigan who eat salads this post is not for you. However if you think a salad is iceberg lettuce, than maybe you might want to read further.

I remember when salads became the perk to a meal. Get such and such dinner and the salad is included. I think this was a way to have you feel you were getting more for your restraunt dollar. I find most house salads terribly ordinary. Ordinary to me means iceberg lettuce, sometimes you might get some wilted "other" greens, croutons from a box, a moment of purple onion and those awful dried shredded carrots from a bag. UGH 

A foodie like me will define a restraunt by it's house salad. Fail in that category and you lose points.

I adore salads. I adore making them at home.  My salads are fantastic. Yet sometimes I just like to go out.  Perhaps you can you relate ?

I have become a bit more clever and creative about getting the type of house salad I prefer when dining out. I am continually surprised at a server's interpretation of my requests and even more surprised at what comes out of the kitchen.

I will ask a server to give me 2 house salads on a dinner plate.  A house dressing on the side. Then I will ask them to add an entire shredded carrot, some sliced purple cabbage, sliced raw red peppers, and some chopped parsley. Please. Seemingly these raw ingredients shouldn't be stretch for most establishments. In my area, outside Chicago this has worked in some places, but not all. Sometimes I will get 3 thin slices of carrot and some slimey jarred roasted peppers.  How that passes for one entire shredded carrot or raw red pepper is beyond me.

While in Michigan this past week I requested my idea of a salad at 4 different restraunts.  Some told me they don't have carrots. Restraunts that don't have carrots. Does that shock you as much as me? What kindof restraunt that actually cooks something doesn't have a carrot? One restraunt said the only fresh vegetable they had was green pepper, and they'd have to charge me for it. ( I think these folks perhaps thought I wanted these extra vegetables for free?!) The rest of the vegetables they had were from a can. Ewwwww. From a can.

The finest of these restraunts, supposedly the one that served fresh fish. Had a really pathetic looking house salad. So I asked for a double spinach instead. You know 2 of those on one plate topped with veggies please. I got 3 of those little puny jarred roasted red peppers on the spinach.  That's it.  I was furious.  Turns out their fish isn't fresh at all. It's frozen. They didn't have asparagus either .  No fresh in season michigan asparagus.  NOT good.

It felt to me like maybe folks from Michigan don't really care about a fresh salad?  Maybe the abundance of vegetables isn't important ? We might grow them but we don't eat them ? 

I found one pretty OK salad.  It had lots of chopped hothouse cucumbers, tomatoes and clean fresh chopped romaine - with the " green " parts! They have a house dressing that had dried mint in it. Nice actually. She was the one who charged to add the green pepper. For .53 cents she added a teaspoon of green pepper. Ummm I was looking for some anti-oxidants and some fiber please. Not sure a teaspoon of green pepper will get me there

My daughter tells me I am a snob and too demanding. Am I ?

Its a pretty dismal thought to think that if I ever decide to relocate, perhaps even to Michigan that I might be deprived of the salad I crave. Gosh I might have to resort to BYO salad fixins! I'm OK with bringing my own wine but I draw the line at lugging arugala.

If that's the case I should just never leave home and expand on my teeny tiny garden. Or perhaps follow the trend to turn lawns into food to eat.

I wish that excited me a bit more.

My friend, author and president of an award winning marketing and communications boutique has recently added me to her list of Culture Scouts. 

Can I just say how positively cool I think that is ?

Patricia Martin's book The Renaissance Generation - The Rise of the Cultural Consumer - predicts the next Renaissance. It has to fall she says. It has to get really bad before we can rebuild it. 

The typical house salad is definitely a decline.  The Cultural Consumer - food snobs like me ( ha!) will be part of who rebuild the future, one lawn garden and one house salad at a time.

She didn't really say that. 

It just sounds funny for this post. 


awesome example of salad toppings flickr image credit  

Karen Hanrahan ~ Wellness Educator/Nutritional Consultant/Blog Author
708.482.0678 ~ Websites: Nutrition Weight Loss, and Green Clean