Tidy up and salad rant

I now have a tidy(ish) room! By this I mean that I can see the floor and cross walk around without stubbing my toe. It was about time I had a good clear out as I have a really bad habit of being a 'hoarder' a trait I must have inherited from my grandfather, although not to the same extremes as keeping plugs and broken toasters. Mostly it was clothes that have been confined to the charity shop, now that they've been replaced and I have even replaced my holey oily and paint covered DIY clothes with some newer but now falling apart ones.

This evening has consisted of a quick conversation to decide the itinerary for tomorrow, a bike ride along the canal, which took a slight detour into a mini debate over the topic of salad and I now have the opportunity to voice my opinions on the evil hellish foodstuff. You are probably now aware of where I stand on this issue and I know that I am likely to be in the minority here but hear me out. First of all I should clarify that by 'salad' I am referring to green salads as they are more formally known, and I have nothing against fruit salads, potato salads or even pasta salads. It's mainly the leaves that get on my nerves, tomatoes and cucumber also annoy me but to a much lesser extent. The main culprit here is lettuce, the food-stuff of rabbits and it seems that this is the only ingredient needed to make a salad sometimes, I think the word is rocket. The main reason that it annoys me, apart from not liking the taste or texture of the stuff, is that it is found everywhere. Its really quite difficult to find a nice sandwich or burger that doesn't have leaves in it. Is it too much to have a no-salad option, or at least have it so that salad is an extra and not a standard option which has to be removed. I feel like such a nuisance when I order things and have to say "without the salad" all the time. I know it's supposedly 'good' for you but how good can three or four leaves actually be?

Tomatoes I understand, I get on quite well with the tinned variety and will happily eat them on their own (heated up of course) or in a sauce etc but any sort of fresh tomato makes me pull a most peculiar face and want to spit them out almost instinctively, like some form of ancient reflex defence. Cucumbers I understand less so, they just taste like crunchy water and how people eat them in a sandwich on their own is a mystery to me.

The thought has just occurred to me that I might have a problem with uncooked things, more specifically, vegetables. Fruit is fine but salad stuffs are the only other things that you normally eat in their raw form I think; carrots could be included in that I guess, but I don't much care for those in their raw form either!

I do sometimes worry that when I'm older and (hopefully) get invited to dinner parties and the like and they serve salad, I will be someone forced to eat it. It's not so bad in restaurants but when you know the chef, you don't want to offend them or be awkward and salads seem to be becoming more and more popular as the shift back to healthy eating continues. TV encourages it quite a lot as well with almost all of the cookery programmes reeling out the benefits of healthy eating and salad seems to go hand in hand with it. Perhaps I will try to come up with a recipe for a salad beater and if I can't then I guess I'll have to admit defeat.