The $12 lettuce is leaving

the salad. It is likely the salad is leaving too. Apparently people don't eat it.

I have eaten out once with family this year. It was a get together at a local pub. There was salad on the table - along with hot bread rolls and olives and olive oil. We ate the lot. We had "entree" size serves of "mains". I think everyone cleared their plates.  The only thing nobody bothered with were those tiny packs of butter wrapped in foil. I imagine they were given to other people as we left those behind.

As a family we like salad vegetables. When the Senior Cat was home I made salads right through the summer. They were "naked" salads - no dressing - but I made sure there was always a variety in there. The Senior Cat grew lettuce leaves of various varieties but he never had much success with the "iceberg" type lettuce. I would occasionally buy one of those. If we had no lettuce leaves to hand then I could always get loose leaf lettuce mix from our excellent greengrocer. It is not cheap but you don't need a lot.

We had tomatoes from the garden, cucumbers and capsicum from the garden...and more. It was all good food - and good on our hot summer days. I'd add protein and a small amount of carbohydrate and we had a good meal. 

This is the sort of thing I want to eat if I am going to pay to eat out. I want good, fresh food. It doesn't have to be "fancy". I am not interested in "fancy". I am willing to try something different if it is offered to me and does not contain something to which I am allergic. 

But apparently the price of salad vegetables and the amount that are wasted are causing establishments to remove salad from the menu or, at very least, ask people if they actually want it. Gone,  apparently, are the days when you got a lettuce leaf, a quarter of a tomato and a slice of Lebanese cucumber. Yes, of course it is harder to keep these on hand than a frozen schnitzel and chips. 

It really isn't doing anything to help the nation's weight problems... but it will help me. I don't eat out very often... and it will be even less often if I can't have a salad with my fish!