I Have Strong Feelings About Salad, Okay?

My Dear Reader,

I mean it. Sometimes salad makes me mad.

I attribute most of this to the fact that I don't like salad dressing. Like, the smell of ranch makes me want to vomit. That's what I mean when I say that I don't like it.

And I realize that this is just a quirk of mine, and some might even say that this is a fault. I'm picky, in this way at least, and I'm making life harder on everyone around me by disliking something that everybody else loves. I won't dispute that argument.

But what I will say is that when you live life dressing-less, you start to see the world differently. Well, at least you start to see salad differently. And let me tell you something: a lot of you don't realize this, but what most people call salads aren't really salads.

Most so-called salads are really just lettuce with gobs of oil and fat poured over it.

We have been had!

Sometimes, the salads I get served at restaurants just make my blood boil. Did I just pay $2.99 for a couple of leaves and a few slivers of carrot? Yes, yes I did. Something is wrong with this world.

Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that I am not a particularly calorie-conscious person. One time, I was in the check out line at a grocery store and, to my horror, I discovered that I accidentally picked up a reduced fat gallon of ice cream. I may have screamed audibly.

So, that said, when you eat a salad without the dressing, you experience something that a lot of people hardly ever experience. You find out what lettuce actually tastes like. And man, some of it literally tastes like dirt, so I don't really blame you. But at the same time, I wonder if lettuce tastes like dirt for a very simple and obvious reason.

Maybe going dressing-less makes you wash your lettuce a little longer than other people. Just saying.

But yeah, I definitely know what lettuce tastes like. I also know what tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots taste like. And I am happy to eat them solo. But I know a lot of people who never do that, and that really worries me. I mean, not to judge you as a person or anything, but if you can't eat a vegetable without drowning it in fat, then maybe it's healthier to not eat vegetables at all? And that's kind of sad?

To sum up, I would like to propose a few food rules:

1. If you're going to eat ice cream, you should just eat the darn ice cream
2. A salad is not a salad unless it has more than two ingredients that are neither lettuce nor dressing
3. Lettuce should not taste like dirt

and

4. We should all know what common vegetables actually taste like by themselves

Okay, now that I have that off of my chest, I'd like to thank you for your time. Please feel free to add your own food quirks/rules in the comments.

In the meantime, I will continue my ongoing attempts to convince my family that while preparing a salad for a group, you can just leave the dressing on the side. That way, people can choose how much of which dressing they want. And the dressing doesn't get soggy. Everyone wins!

Regards, best wishes, and really, this isn't that hard,

-Cecily Jane