# Look, I just want a salad!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/look-i-just-want-a-salad/369735>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [August 22, 2006, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/look-i-just-want-a-salad/369735 "2006-08-22T12:45:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2006, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/look-i-just-want-a-salad/369735/1 "2006-08-22T12:45:22Z")

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An ordinary salad. Like you’ve always made.

Maybe a plain garden salad with iceberg lettuce, grape tomatoes, orange peppers and red onions. Those are a good staple.

Or your mediterranean. Spring mix greens, red onions, grape tomatoes and peppers. Those are quite nice with a balsamic vinaigrette.

Or your caesar. Pretty basic, but I like that the romaine is by itself while you package the croutons, bacon bits and parmesan cheese in little containers to be applied when you’re ready to eat.

I mean, while you sometimes packaged each of these salads with an odd choice of dressing packet (really, a caesar with raspberry balsamic?) they were still good salads. I just want one of those.

But no.

You had to go and monkey with success.

Now you’ve assaulted my caesar with roasted chicken and dispensed with the self-contained ingredients in favour of smaller, pre-mixed portions.

You’ve insulted my garden salad with crunchy orange chow mein sticks.

You’ve embarassed my mediterranean with mandarin orange segments. And not even fresh ones, either, but ones that once floated in a jar with light syrup.

And you removed the dressing packets to offer them separately at $0.50 each, and then jacked up the price of the salads themselves.

Your greek is fine, you just charge too damn much for it, and the only suitable dressing you have available for it is “Greek Feta” – a creamy concoction that, while nice, is not the usual oil/vinegar/oregano you’re supposed to have with a _real_ greek.

So … why? Why screw with what were once perfectly good salads? Because now they’re “gourmet?” Well, screw your “gourmet,” Highland Farms. Screw it right where the sun don’t shine.

I just want an ordinary damn salad!

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**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2006, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/look-i-just-want-a-salad/369735/2 "2006-08-22T13:10:19Z")

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Maybe you can adapt your request as Jack Nicholson did in _Five Easy Pieces_.

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**Author:** ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2006, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/look-i-just-want-a-salad/369735/3 "2006-08-22T14:55:55Z")

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[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.]  
Maybe you can adapt your request as Jack Nicholson did in _Five Easy Pieces_.  
[/QUOTE]

I’d like to, but the chef – or whatever they call the guy who makes all the “fresh” in-house stuff they sell – hides out somewhere in this vast edifice, no doubt thinking up new ways to bastardize food.