Salad Dressing-- Free at Last.

No, not like fat free or stolen. I don't do that shit anymore. I mean free from the damn salad dressing, which at some point, had placed a chokehold on like my entire nutritional system!*

Giving up salad dressing has been awesome for my lifestyle. Here's why:

• No salad dressing shopping. So, though I don't do fat phobia diets anymore, as you probably know, I did. Trying to find a low-fat or fat-free (almost impossible) dressing that tasted passable consumed a large portion of my food thoughts in the 1990s and beyond. Way too much. Do you ever hear people speak in hushed but excited tones about salad dressing? Like, "You have got to try this new vegetable glue dressing. It only has 7 grams of fat per droplet and you can always just dip your fork in it!" Ridiculous. Plus who the fuck wants to eat something passable? "Mmm...this food is so passable!"
• No fatty chemical sauce concerns. As much as I don't want to avoid fat, I don't think I can get on board with the blantant sluttery of say...ranch dressing. I certainly know there are dressings that avoid this, but most of them are just the worst ills of industrialized food all concentrated up in a bottle. I want fat in my diet, but I'd rather get something of substance, like a whole chicken, out of the deal. Maybe that's why I put it on pizza in college? (In addition to the reason of being drunk.)
• No salad dressing transport logistics. Thank God. I remember that for many years this was a significant barrier to taking a salad for lunch. Since you generally can't put the dressing on the salad hours ahead of time (see what an asshole dressing is?) due to wilting, matters get complicated. Over the years I tried keeping extra bottles at work (quite a financial investment), putting dressing in little baggies inside the salad dish, placing the bottle at home on top of the salad so that I wouldn't forget it even though I always did, and even buying plastic lunch containers with a built-in salad dressing cup-- which is cool till you lose the little lid, and various other bullshit. It was all way too much trouble. Not to mention the general logistics involved in having fresh salad dressing in general. WTF does spoiled blush wine vinegar dressing smell like? I dunno. Anyhow, the net result was a reduction in salad eating.
• Tasting vegetables. Here's what happened. At some point, I realized that I didn't need dressing if I had other items, like salsa or guacamole. Somewhere between 1-2 years ago, during some sort of cleanse, the acceptable other items started to be fruit and meat or almonds. Before I knew it, I was enjoying the taste of the vegetables alone. It's fucking amazing! Some veggies taste better than others, but they all taste good. Raw and on their own. My nutritionist even advised me that she wanted me to use some sorta oil dressing, but I still mostly don't bother.

So there you go. It's easier and it tastes better. Oh, I guess I could have just said that, but it's not my style.*

Here are a few salad combos that I love without dressing:

• Green stuff (spinach, baby greens, whatever) with strawberries, blueberries, and/or black berries (whatever is on sale), turkey or something, almonds. Oh I also do this with smoked salmon sometimes.
• Green stuff, salami, olives and other items from olive bar. Sometimes hummus.
• Green stuff, black beans, salsa or pico or just tomatoes, chicken.

*You know, some of my students from this year, told me that I'm dramatic about everything. I was like, "whatever, I just speak with flair," but I'm starting to see their point. Also, "speak with flair"-- who says that?