David:
Here are some thoughts on and reactions to your hate speech against salad (still, luckily, not prosecutable under federal law):
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"Salad is sloppy... Salad renders the beautiful unattractive..."
For some reason, many restaurateurs and too many private citizens have taken the approach to salad making that entails putting, as you put it, elephantine leaves of greens in their salads... This combined with some sort of strange prejudice against or fear of using a knife on salad which contains grotesquely large elements does result in precisely the ungainly transformation of even the finest of faces into visages more reminiscent of Flossy the Cow and Mr. Ed (no gender bias on my part!).
An easy remedy... If you're making a salad, tear the pieces into small and mouth-manageable pieces... If you're served a salad with elements sized for the trough, pull out a knife and render them less aesthetically dangerous.
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"... I'm not sure why anyone would eat food that is hard to digest..."
It's been a long time since I studied physiology but I believe one of the benefits of eating salad after the main course of a meal is that it helps move other things along. Eating salad before dinner, at least a basic sort of a salad (as opposed to certain special first-course-like salads), seems to me weird and pointless... I grew up eating salad always with the main (second) course or after the main course. Coming at that point in the meal, it apparently does have demonstrably good effects on digestion and in addition, if one is having the right kind of salad, it helps cleanse the palate.
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"Salad, the dieter's supposed first line of defense..."
Tied to the the final point in the preceding paragraph is the following: There has developed in this country an excessive fondness for rich and crassly flavoured salad dressings. Perhaps all the Ranches and Blue Cheeses and Creamy Italians and Russians and whatever else are all very delicious, but precisely because they are by taste assertive and by fat (and salt and sugar) content caloric and not intended as health food, salad dressed with such things should to my mind be eaten only once in a while and then as a real course of a meal if not as the meal itself.
Salad, day-in day-out, work-a-day, blue-collar (and for that matter white-collar) salad, the kind of salad that is just a delicious and refreshing little solid
digestif that helps cleanse the palate, that should be a very simple salad dressed very simply. Olive oil, lemon or vinegar, a little salt and pepper... That's functional and elegant and good.
And if one loves olive oil, a simply dressed salad is an excellent way to enjoy that flavour of uncooked oil.
And if one loves bread and has access to really good bread, a simply dressed salad is an excellent way to enjoy that flavour of uncooked oil together with good bread.
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Some complex salads are glorious dishes. A well made Greek village salad (without lettuce!), with the best quality ingredients, is one of the most refreshing and tasty dishes known to mankind...
The southern Italian salad of fennel and red onion and orange slices and olives... a bit of alchemical genius...
A salad of Belgian endive with apple and nuts and lardons and blue cheese...
A salade Niçoise...
A nopalito salad...
These are simply outstanding dishes.
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To me, one of the best accompaniments to roasted or grilled meat is some manner of slightly assertive and minimally dressed (or 'totally nude', as Jacques Pepin might say), single green (e.g., rocket, watercress, cress, endive, etc.) or simple salad combination. The contrast of cool and crisp and tangy with the hot and fatty softness of the flesh is a combination made in heaven.
This is the reasoning that lies behind the garnishing of tacos and kebab sandwiches and, for that matter, hamburgers. The salad is placed in the bread with the meat.
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Bacteria? Schmacteria. Would I eat raw vegetables in a place where sanitation and water pollution are problems? No.
Would I eat shellfish drawn from questionable sea water? No.
Would I eat meat from a place where the animals are often carriers of a disease that can be transmitted to humans? No.
Would I eat anything in a place where I knew the employees don't wash their hands? No.
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Salad, like anything else, can be good or bad, depending on who is making it.
Antonius
Alle Nerven exzitiert von dem gewürzten Wein -- Anwandlung von Todesahndungen -- Doppeltgänger --
- aus dem Tagebuch E.T.A. Hoffmanns, 6. Januar 1804.
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Na sir is na seachain an cath.