Boring Salad Club
I eat salads for dinner most weeknights. To ensure that I have salad, and not, say, a giant oatmeal cookie from the cafe downstairs, I have told each of the kids I teach in my 6:30 classes that if I come to work without salad for dinner, I will pay them five dollars. We call it Boring Salad Club, as one of the kids said, “You always have salad. So boring!” If they want to bring salad to eat as well, they’re welcome to. But Boring Salad Club has turned out to be the antithesis of boredom.
They love it. They even lean into the room before class to check that I have my salad. One student counsels, “You need protein, but not so much cheese next time. Cheese is fattening.” Another loves, loves the crunching sound of Romaine, so I save the really crunchy Romaine hearts for Friday nights. her eyes light up and she listens intently to the crunch. This, I think is a bit strange, but in the whole rainbow of kinds of strangeness, she’s pretty tame. The kids ask about the dressings, about the add-ins, about the ratios of, say, lettuce to red pepper. We talk about the nutrients in the various vegetables, and sometimes this has an effect. Last week I overheard one of my Boring Salad Club kids telling his mother, “I want good eyesight. We should eat more carrots.”
Man, I love my job.