Tag Steak Salad

Salad Days

Michael 2 Comments

A couple of days ago I met a friend for lunch. This is a change for me as I usually meet friends for breakfast which itself was a change for me as I used to meet friends for happy hour. The things we must adjust to as we get older. Sigh.

Anyway changing from breakfast to lunch meant I had to read and consider the menu. Breakfast is easy. I check out what’s at the top of the list and say I’ll have the *full in the blank* with the eggs over easy and wheat toast. The top item is always the same, two (sometimes 3) eggs any style with three (sometimes 2) pieces of bacon and sauaage, home fries, and toast. It’s just about what I have every morning whether out or at home except that on Saturdays at home I add pancakes or waffles depending on my mood unless I completely switch things up and go with French Toast, or decide to give my heart a break (it’s one of the few organs still in its original condition) and have oatmeal.

So, that top item on the breakfast menu. It’s always the same but I have to take a quick glance at the menu to see what that particular restaurant/diner calls it so I can *fill in the blank* for the server. Even the most greasy-spoon-ish diner will have some cute name for it. Grandpa Bob’s Favorite or Harvey’s Hungry Meal or The Lumberjack Special. Bob and Harvey make sense because we’re usually eating at Bob’s Breakfasts or Harvey’s Hungry House. But a bunch of places have a lumberjack meal or two and I don’t know that this spot on Earth is known for commercial forresting. It’s their places and their menus so I guess they can call ther meals whatever they like.

But I digress. Again. On this particular day I wasn’t eating breakfast out and had to get accustomed to a whole new set of menu selections. Did you ever notice that restaurants/diners don’t give lunch offerings cute names? A grilled chicken wrap is a grilled chicken wrap. I guess by lunch most of the diners have fumbled their way through a half day of work, school, or shopping and just want to eat.

I checked out the offerings and made my choice. I might have mumbled sort of out loud that I was going on the light side and order a salad. That’s when my lunch companion just had to remind me that salad does not always equal light and healthy. Especially at this spot on Earth. Around here our best selling salad whether at restaurants, diners, or at the bar during those once happier happy hours is the steak salad.

Now at those places on Earth that might recognize that you can make a salad out of a steak might just add some grilled steak strips onto a bowl of lettuce and it’s usual accompaniments. Not here. Here we take a whole steak, perhaps even a strip steak, and drop it on top of a hearty salad that by itself could serve 3 or 4, then add cheese, hardboiled eggs (at least two), and french fries. And the only dressing allowed is ranch. And never on the side. Yep. Not exactly light.

So, I decided against the steak salad and tried to stick with something “on the light side.” And I found it, right there in the salad section. A taco salad. It didn’t even come with dressing.

How much lighter can you get?

That’s what I  think. Really. How ’bout you?

The Salad Days of Summer

Michael Leave a comment

Even worse than the dog days of summer are the summer salad days. Those are the days when even a confirmed carnivore welcomes a chilled plate of veggies in place of steak and ‘tators.

I hit the salad days about a week ago. It was a day that started out like no day should ever start with me being hauled away in the back of an ambulance after ripping a gash in my leg on a hunk of cardboard. You know how much a paper cut hurts. Think of cardboard as a bunch of paper all stacked up just waiting to slice through an unsuspecting appendage. It wasn’t so terrible. A couple of hours in the emergency room, a few lab tests, a pair of stitches and one large tetanus shot and home in time for lunch.

But honesty, after a morning like that, that started before I even had breakfast, even though I was hungry as a bear, the last thing I wanted to do was eat. I was quite content sitting with my leg elevated and the noon newscast detailing the horrors other metro residents had been facing that morning. Fortunately my daughter recognized the grumbling noise coming from the living room not coming from me because I couldn’t get comfortable but coming from me because my stomach was quite sure my mouth had been stitched shut.  “How about a salad?”

It seemed innocent enough. Some lettuce, perhaps a tomato, the sort of thing that one burns more calories eating than one expends on chewing. Boy was I wrong. I got an old fashioned “what’s in the fridge that can look a little like a chef’s salad” salad. Green and red peppers, red onions, mushrooms, ham, turkey, provolone, cheddar, and carrots on a bed of butter lettuce with ranch dressing. Fabulous! Filling, tasty, a variety of textures, and still light when compared to my usual lunch of pepperoni and peanut butter on wheat toast.

That started a run of salads from simple leftover rotisserie chicken salad on a bed of lettuce to a full out steak salad. We make ours with hearty greens, bell peppers, sweet onions, radishes, hard boiled eggs, whatever leftover steak might be in the fridge warmed up, and French fries (oven baked if you want the healthy version). That with some fresh melon for dessert and you really can forget about a classic steak and baked potato. And be satisfied.

But the salad days won’t last long. It’s only a matter of time before I’ll want an old fashioned hot dog off the grill smothered with chopped onions and baked beans.  Maybe two of them.  Make that three.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?