Salad vs Fast Food.

So I decided to make a fresh vegetable salad. I don’t know what led me to that – maybe it was all those bright, colourful vegetables. Yellow and green bell peppers, red tomatoes, a fresh green cabbage, mushrooms and cucumbers, olives too.

Since I have doing a fair bit of cooking these days, trying to rustle up simple stuff in the kitchen, I decided to make a nice dish out of all this. And a salad was the easiest option on a Saturday night when I am usually occupied with football action on telly. I decided to scramble two eggs as well and add them to the salad. Cut up cabbage and the other vegetables, stir-fried the mushrooms in a tiny bit of butter, made croutons. Then I made a dressing of fresh cream and olive oil and lemon juice, seasoned it with salt, pepper and chilli flakes, and tossed it all up with the vegetables, imagining myself in the Masterchef kitchen with a spotless white apron tied around me. I tasted, made adjustments. It turned out fine and I was quite happy and satisfied with the taste. I transferred the salad to a big green bowl, poured out a glass of Real juice (orange flavour – my favourite), and sat down to a healthy dinner, extremely pleased with myself. Also very proud, that I was managing a dinner minus pizza/oily curry/gravy/tandoori roti/etc.

First bite – excited to taste the salad I made. Felt good. Salt and pepper was right, the capsicums were crunchy, the dressing was perfectly balanced with tang and sweetness.

Second bite – tasted the mushrooms. Lightly sautéed, coloured goldenish-brown. Good.

Third bite: Eggs and croutons. Some more vegetables. A tomato. Yech. I make a face.

By the fourth, fifth and sixth bites of the salad, a kind of weariness had set in. Each time a piece of vegetable went crunch in my mouth, the brain would refuse to process the taste. Seemed like there was no taste. I wondered, “How do people eat a salad? Worse, how do they enjoy it?” My brain took me back to the delicious three-cheese chicken pizza I had the last night. I could still taste the tomato sauce, the chicken chunks, the cheese on the crust and inside it. Maybe I am too much of a junk food/spice person to actually manage enjoying a salad.

Finally, I gave up. I picked out the mushrooms and croutons and scrambled eggs, left the tomatoes and bell peppers in the bowl and consigned it to the bottom of my fridge shelf. I have promised myself that I will finish it off tomorrow, for breakfast maybe. For now, I am poring into the fridge, trying to conjure up some bacon and sausages and a nice big cheeseburger with everything on it (and extra pickles)!