Some People’s Idea of a Meal

Sometimes I feel as if the entire medical profession is ganging up on me to eat salads with or without chicken. To begin with, I am no lover of chicken or turkey, though I like to use their stock in cooking soups.

But I draw the line at what the typical American considers a salad: a bunch of leaves with some goopy dressing. My complaint is not with raw vegetables. In hot weather I make good salads with red and green peppers, celery, onions, garlic, and even a few leaves of red leaf or butter lettuce mixed in. Salads consisting of nothing but leaves, as in “field greens,” I usually leave on my plate untouched. Without a decent crunch, salads come across as limp weeds with no character.

Now certain Middle Eastern salads are more to my liking, such as Shirazi or Israeli salads, with diced tomatoes and cucumbers—and no raw greens. Even Greek salads have some crunch, along with some tasty feta cheese for flavor. But American salads, well ….

I know that “they’re good for you”—but so is a lot of other unpalatable stuff. When I eat, I don’t like to feel that I am grazing in a meadow. (I suspect that most people who eat those all-leaf salads are doing it to make room for rich pastries or chocolates afterwards, when out of sight of one’s friends.)

Do I eat enough vegetables? Yes, indeed! All my dishes include a good mix of veggies. Especially my soups, which usually contain Swiss chard or kale mixed with stock in my blender.