Salads & Salad Dressing

I mentioned meeting a lady who spent most of her adult life in the GTA before moving back to Orkney a few years ago. We had a great chat comparing notes on everything from the 401, to banking, to customer service, to foods we miss from home (Canada).

Shirley made an interesting observation regarding that last point: salad dressing in British supermarkets. There is none. Well, not none, but in comparison to the selections back home, the salad dressing section of the local Tesco is somewhat lacking (seriously, one three foot wide shelf, with maybe four or five different choices at best). Shirley makes her son bring a few bottles of Kraft dressing that she can’t get here every time he visits. She also misses Renée’s jars of Caesar dressing, but as those are fresh, her son can’t bring them in his suitcase. We both agree that yes, homemade dressing is both easy and good, but also . . . sometimes you just want some gloopy Kraft Thousand Island or some Newman’s Own Greek with Feta. (In fact, growing up, we used to make fun of my Mum for having at least five different bottles of dressing in the refrigerator door at all times.)

Talking about this with Shirley made me think about something the head of the Community Fridge said recently: she commented on the fact that the Fridge is given lots of ‘nearing-best-before-date’ lettuce from the Co-op that is left sitting on the shelves, and it’s the last thing people pick up at the Fridge – and she said that’s true all across the UK when it comes to food waste. Shirley and I agreed, if they stocked more and varied dressings, maybe Brits would eat more salad.