Salad Quest

Source

Four plus weeks into my monastic existence I was growing rather tired of what I was eating. Nothing fancy mind you, but altogether boring, and rather lacking in leafy green vegetables. Well, rather lacking in any sort of vegetable at all.

Now as a callow youth I could get by on nothing but meat and potatoes, as I age though, my body lets me know that it needs other things, roughage comes to mind. No need to get into any sordid details there, suffice to say, we were lacking in that area.

So ...

(Caveat: if you've a mind to give me advice in the comments about diet, exercise, vitamins, blah, blah, blah ... Hold your water, I'm too set in my ways to change now. So if I start seeing comments to that effect, don't be surprised if they get deleted. Share your own experiences if you will, but bear in mind, I'm set in my ways and I'm grumpy as hell without my better half around. Her return will do me a world of good, I, and by extension you, must be patient until she does.)

Anyhoo.

So Monday night I'm thinking about eating, gave a thought to going out to do so, but I haven't gone out to a dining establishment by myself in a very long time. Hated that back in my single days, I'm sure I still hate it. So it was get take-out or get delivery. Take-out would require going forth into the waning daylight, dealing with traffic and, what is sometimes worse, dealing with people. Don't get me wrong, I get along fine with most folks, but there are days I'd rather not have to do so.

So delivery it was. Pizza? While I do love pizza, getting even a small one means eating pizza a few days in a row. Or throwing out whatever is left over.

Whilst perusing the Domino's menu (hold your water, I LIKE Domino's) I thought about one of their "not bad" sandwiches. But those are hit or miss, did the kid loading it into the oven plan to pull it out on time? Or would it arrive rather too crispy like the last one did?

That's when I did a double take as I scrolled ...

Salads? Domino's has salads?

Why yes, yes they do.

They have a classic garden salad and they have a chicken Caesar salad (in my area, their website speaks of a third type we don't have here). As tomatoes and I do not get along (it's the seeds man, my colon cannot abide them) so I went with the chicken Caesar. I was also desiring the protein. I'm an omnivore leaning towards the more carnivorous aspect of that diet. So, I ordered it and was prepared to be, well ...

Underwhelmed springs to mind. However ...

The salad arrived, I noted that it was prepared by an outfit called Ready Pac Foods, Inc. and came with all the necessary things to build a chicken Caser salad. Each component had it's own packaging so that things weren't all jumbled up, soggy, what-have-you.

The lettuce was crisp and tasted very fresh, after adding the chicken, the croutons, and the shredded parmesan, I pulled out the salad dressing packet. Ken's Foods, LLC, a brand I've had before and found to be most satisfactory and rather tasty.

All told, it was a most excellent salad. And filling as well. I had ordered a sandwich as well (chicken bacon ranch if you must know) and as I ate my salad with relish, I looked at the sandwich and said (out loud, with me in the house all alone), "Poor thing, I don't really need you, do I?" (Spoiler alert, I saved it for later, wished at that time that I had another salad.)

So later in the week, that would be Wednesday, when I went to the food emporium to procure my rations, I looked up beforehand whether or not the store had some sort of pre-packaged salad thingamabob, now that I knew such a thing existed.

Lo and behold, they did, bought three of 'em I did (on sale they were).

As I left the store, feeling rather proud of myself, I realized that I had voluntarily sought out and purchased something healthy to eat. There's a first, right there.

When telling The Nuke about how impressed I was she asked me about the dressing, I said something to the effect of, "It comes with its own package of Caesar sauce."

That last word hung in the air for a moment before I corrected myself and said, "I mean Caesar salad dressing ..."

Alas, I was too late, The Nuke was laughing hysterically on her end and I had to chuckle myself.

Caesar sauce, I kinda felt like Paulie Walnuts in The Sopranos when they go to Italy and Paulie keeps referring to the pasta sauce as "gravy." (Which a friend of mine assured me that that's what it's called in New Jersey, gravy, not sauce. Live and learn.)

So that was my big adventure this week, salad quest. Last week it was new socks, this week it was going forth to purchase salad. The old dog learned a new trick.

Simple things, gotta love 'em.