It Was Real, and It was Spectacular

I made a run to town around noon to check out bargains at The Dollar Tree. My mom met me there, because she had some coupons for the allergy medicine Genius takes. We're all about saving a buck out here in Backroads. The more you save, the more you have to spare for fattening yourself with gas station chicken and getting all hopped up on caffeine from those 44 oz. Diet Cokes.

I found a few items I was looking for, and picked up some Buncha Crunch for The Pony. We are having movie night with the second installment of The Planet of the Apes set that he got for his birthday. Tonight is Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

At the end of the aisle, I snagged a green plastic see-through leaf-shaped dish. It looks like the type of container that you might use to set out snacks on your coffee table if you threw a party in the 1950s. I'm not planning a party, and I wasn't around to throw any in the 1950s. But I know a deal when I see one.

I've been looking for a bowl to hold a big salad. I didn't want a deep bowl. And I didn't want to put my salad on a plate. I wanted a large, flat bowl to get maximum saladage, and dressing across the top so I didn't have to eat a bite with plain lettuce. This leaf bowl was perfect. It was about two inches deep, perhaps ten inches long and five inches wide. But irregular, of course, because it's shaped like a leaf. A monocot, apparently, because its veins are parallel, not netted or branched. That's some free science knowledge for you to lap up from my leaf bowl. Enjoy.

To endear itself to me further, this leaf dish was my favorite color: green. And I'm going to use it for salads. Green, leafy vegetable salads. Of large proportions.

The minute I got home, I washed my leaf. I set it in the dish drainer while I boiled an egg from our recalcitrant chickens. I also tossed some fajita chicken strips in there, just to boil the salty fajitaness out of them, not having any regular chicken to add to my salad. Shh...don't want my front-yard fowl to hear of this plan to consume their brethren and sistren.

While that pot was cooling, I grabbed some romaine, some shredded cheese, some croutons, my pepper-grinder, sliced some tiny tomatoes-on-the-vine, and commenced to constructing a masterpiece of a big salad. The only thing missing was some sunflower kernels that I had forgotten at The Dollar Tree. A dash of Hidden Valley Ranch Light, and I was good to go.

Mmm...there's nothing better than a big salad. Unless it's a big salad that somebody else picks up for you and pays for, then lets another somebody hand it to you and get the credit.