Art and the Deconstructed Salad

Spoken word shopping list for a Supermarket Salad in the City.

Products come in bags and plastic and wraps and shrink wrap and have no clear serving suggestions. Scissors are required. Sharp knives. What’s your postcode?

Tomatoes on the vine. An aspirational dream for the middle class wannabe.

Chopped and washed mixed leaves from some huge polytunnel somewhere in Spain. Rocket, spinach and iceberg. Salad days stereotypes. (Salad days is a Shakespearian term from the play Antony & Cleopatra referring to a period of carefree innocence, idealism, and pleasure associated with youth. The modern use describes a heyday, when a person is was at the peak of their abilities, but not necessarily youthful. A time of perfect rapport … perhaps.) Salad Boys are a band from New Zealand.

Hedge clippings. Shapes and textures. Parked up Park Ranger Jeep Wrangler.

Added extra crunch. Lubricate the parts. Balsamic vinegar. Whenever I see somebody outside but heading into a salad bar wearing earbuds or headphones it’s hard not to assume that they are also using a Bluetooth butt plug device … for the clarity of the bass tones of course.

Carrots cut like crunchy soldiers modelled from Barry Lyndon style uniforms or just 4 x 1 Lego bricks.

Peppers in at least two colours, but is it the three bump bottom or the four bump bottom that I need, and why can I not taste any difference?

Cheese. All kinds of cheese. So many that I cannot name the best flavours or tell you the details. Soft Italian. Cheddar. Maybe Greek. Maybe mozzarella. Blue cheese for the carefree. Brie for those who like to bite into a triangle’s powerful shape in the vain hope of cracking the universe. Carefully set the temperature on your fridge as if you were defusing an unexploded bomb.

Potato salad, any kind you can get, in a plastic click top tub. Poverty spec. Ready made.

I would ask you to add anchovies, but you might ignore me. What are these salty little fish, cramped and all oily from a can, doing here anyway? A deep sea mystery and unjust market forces are at play.

Chicken with garlic mushrooms. Pretty basic. Anyone could do this but I’m not judging you or your level of skill.

French Bread. Hot butter.

Branston’s fine pickle pieces on a shiny sliced tomato are nice. Chutney is another thing.

Raw red onion, sliced and hidden like landmines among the green jungle. Your breath will not thank you, but they add a twist. Dangerous living. Best to leave early.

Thousand Island dressing and the steel blue eyes of Paul Newman (RIP). Other name dropping products are available but I can’t recall the names.

Crumbly, flaky, seedy mixes to throw across the plain bowl. Salad nuts. Beans and has beens. I forgot the celery, cucumber and various watercolour flavoured dips and nobody really minded.

Boiled eggs, cut up perfectly. Beyond the skills of the average human, but we try. We often fail too. It is possible to “keep” chickens these days. Egg shells are also useful items that you can just throw away with a clear conscience.

Olive oil. The height, width and depth of all of civilisation is here, stored in these virgin green glass bottles with their exotic names and arty labels. £6 a pop. Or maybe use a plastic squeezy bottle that can be fine tuned for an exact rate of magical drizzle experience. Use of such an item suggests a professional level of cookery skill and/or that you shop in Tesco. Also try an actual olive. Beware of world shortages and spikes of frosty weather.

Herbs and seasoning. Fresh or dried or frozen. Green leafy herbs are the key and garlic is the lock, and that makes no sense at all. Some people have these readily available from their garden herb tubs or tub free herb gardens. A trowel may be needed. Sharpen up your knife. Wear good quality gloves.

Croutons to scatter like edible confetti at a teenage wedding.

Breadsticks we munch and nod towards, wringing your hands in the queue for the mayonnaise spoon. Is it clean? The mayo is not homemade either. The body language for idiosyncratic queue behaviours is learned from dealing with difficult adult encounters at an early age.

Hellmann’s.

No joke. Now need some lemons to juice. What could you say to that if you were a vegan?

Try a fine red wine with it. Clink.

All on a warm, clean white plate. A splodge of Guacamole to add some post war bathroom/hospital colours to the feast. Smashed Black and Decker avacado and some tipsy roll-mop herring pierced by a well machined cocktail stick. Not to be confused with Coleslaw. Shredded raw cabbage.

In any garden centre cafe you will likely get a pile of plain industrial style potato crisps with your tuna panini, plus a green salad with some of the above piled up on the side. That’s all going to be overpriced but OK at the same time too.

Radio play for mood music: The Guitar Twang King Thing.