My Salad Situation

Am I goat? Why am I eating leaves?

An edamame salad

Salad, like yoga, seems to some to suggest a personality type more than anything. In a Zimbabwean vernacular, you call somebody “Sa-lad” (emphasis on the last syllable) if they are snootily moronic… bourgwaaaa… la-di-da… shee-shee-fu-fu... uppity… precious.

The idea of eating an array of mostly raw vegetables used to make me a little angry inside. It seemed to symbolize some sort of extreme self-deprivation… a kind of torture I was quite happy to leave to some suburban housewives somewhere. It was a little too western for my already overly-westernized African self. When I visited Los Angeles for the first time, I got off the plane starving and my friend took me to a salad restaurant. I wanted to smack him… and all the other twigs in the joint munching away on grass pretending to be satiated by some carb-less existence.

But I changed. Over the past year or so, I’ve gotten into the whole salad thing… in kind of a big way. When I first moved to California, I was super-excited for what felt like all you can eat Mexican food all over the place. I drowned myself in chicken quesadillas... they tasted good. But these days, the idea of eating a chicken quesadilla does absolutely nothing for me. Aside from the fact that I don’t eat meat, my palate’s more excited by the bright and bold colors and complex of textures found in a giant salad bowl.

A spinach and berry salad with almond slivers

And size does matter! I discovered that part of the whole overeating and overweight thing had to do with the fact that I like to chew a lot… like I could eat a mountain of food. So, in a weird way, I get roughly the same amount of satisfaction sitting down and eating an entire giant bag of crisps (potato chips) as I do eating an entire giant bag of lettuce. I’ve done both, many-a-time. The difference is that one bag has about 1200 calories and the other has about 25. So… I pick the lettuce.

I’ve gotten really into the taste of fresh fruits and vegetables. And from eating them so often, I’ve reset my body, my appetite, my palate. I feel as though salad dressings hide or monopolize the taste. So I don’t use dressings, and I’m not into cheese (two things that… if you’re not cautious… can make your salad a de facto quesadilla… calorically-speaking). But I try to get the nice mixture of nutrients that a meal should have (carbs, protein, fats, vitamins, minerals, all that jazz). My salads have it all…fruits and vegetables and nuts and beans… hearty salads… good stuff. And when I munch away, I feel satisfied, energized, fueled and ready to roll.