Another Confession

I love salad.  I often joke about the day when I win the Powerball and have a commercial size salad bar installed in my home (along with a person to maintain it.)  I have a cookbook entitled Salad Days. Guess what?  It's all about salad.  I have another cookbook that is nothing but dressings.  I love a salad as simple as the Mullaney Salad to a monster Greek salad, Iceberg lettuce and all, to a masterpiece that can feature anything from a black bean cake to sliced filet mignon.  Just sitting here typing, I'm thinking about great salads I've had:  the crab cake salad at the Blue Marlin, blackened shrimp on a Caesar, a big giant bleu cheese wedge.  But, despite all the exquisite salads I've had in my time, I have a confession to make.

Sometimes, all I want is some good old fashioned "food service" ranch dressing.  Food service dressing is way different than grocery store ranch dressing.  It's just better, plain and simple.  And I love it. It is for this reason that I can endure meetings and banquets that serve rubber chicken, shrimp creole made with canned shrimp, canned green beans, cornbread that is really building blocks.  I just turn to the salad with that wonderful, brilliant white commercial grade ranch dressing. 

I fell in love with the stuff in the 8th grade.  I had finally learned to like salad..yeah, as a kid, the whole salad thing didn't work for me.  Then one day, I just decided to try the salad bar at a Steak and Ale and became a salad devotee.  (Remember those ice cold pewter salad plates they had at those restaurants?  And they always had garbanzo beans too!) Anyway, in the 8th grade, I "graduated" from Campus I of Irmo Middle School to the major league venue known as Campus R.  (Originally they were to build out all four I-R-M-O..get it?)  Campus R had a salad bar in the cafeteria.  Hello!  We have arrived.  We are entrusted by the adultroids to actually decide on what we want to eat, and even construct it ourselves?  I could feel myself becoming older & wiser just standing there holding the tongs.  For me, it was this:  lettuce of course, pickles, cheese, croutons and food service ranch.  I'm waxing poetic just thinking about it.  I'm going to have to get one of my restaurant/chef friends to hook me up from their supplier.  I keep saying that, but forget to actually ask.  Mid-year resolution: procure ranch dressing.  Now, if I could get my hands on some of that rectangular pizza from the school cafeteria...


Anyway, that's my confession.  I love food service ranch dressing.  I admit it and I'm holding my head up high!