Sam's Cookalong Diary Lettuce make salad

Date Published:

14/01/2008

I ponder the goodness in salad - with a little help from Gordon. By our Cookalong guinea pig Sam Jordison

Salad days

I know it sounds backward, but I haven't been looking forward to my salad day on the Cookalong diary

My grown-up rational self loves salad, especially when combined with a good olive oil vinaigrette as on 4Food's training video. This part of my cooking soul also knows that salad is not too fattening, but very good for me and I should enjoy cramming as much as it into my maw as I can manage.

But a more basic, atavistic part of me loathes the stuff. It cries out "sal-ad bor-ing" to me in a five-year-old-style mantra and longs instead to get tucking into some really good stuff like bacon, egg and potato waffles. It secretly plans to dash the nice, healthy salad I will offer it to the floor or, at the very least, to completely ignore it on the big night while greedily tucking into that big, juicy steak.

Fast food greens

I'd feel embarrassed by my irrational feelings about rocket and lettuce, if I weren't so certain that plenty of others suffer from the same mental conflict. The proof I have for this is fast food restaurants. Inhabiting as they do, a sci-fi realm of popular psychology in which they cater for our sub-conscious desires as well as our rational needs, many fast food chains have come up with a dual-purpose salad. They cater for your sensible self by 1) putting it on the menu in the first place as an option you can feel virtuous for choosing instead of burgers and 2) making much of its healthful, vitamin filled qualities in their advertising. Cunningly, however, they also provide for your more primal subliminal urges by lacing their salads with salt and sugar and all manner of naughty add-ons that will give you the heart-pounding kicks you craves. They know that even if we think we want a healthy salad, we really desire a giant cholesterol hit and sock it straight to us.

The conclusion to be drawn from all that is that you should either just eat the burger anyway or never go to a fast food place, depending on which part of you is stronger. Personally, I tend towards making my own salad so that I know what's in it, but this course isn't without its difficulties either.

Resolution

Actually, now I think of it, maybe it's a subliminal fear of insects that is putting me off my green dish, not my subconscious desire for an early heart attack. Perhaps, if I was a bit more diligent with the taps, I could finally cast the shadows from my id. I could eat salad happily and gladly. I'll start trying on Friday.

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