This site is dedicated to the world's shittiest salads (and other shitty and not-so-shitty stuff). Register, send in your shitty pics and stories, and check back often. Until, then: go out and find some shit!
Loyal readers, thank you for your patience with the paltry posting over the past few weeks while I completed my qualifying exams. With that milestone behind me, full focus returns to the salad.To kick off the return to shittysalad, we’ll be exploring disgusting salad recipes you can enjoy at home. Here’s the “Worst Salad of the [Nineteen] Twenties” (Lovegren, 2005) to start with–perhaps we can work towards the present? Enjoy this treat and then write in with your favorite salad recipes from throughout the ages.
Banana and Popcorn Salad
1 banana, peeled and cut in half, length-wise
1 lettuce leaf
Popcorn
Mayonnaise
Place banana on lettuce leaf. Scatter popcorn over banana and place dabs of mayonnaise here and there. Makes one serving. To make it as gross as possible, be sure to use iceberg lettuce and don’t skimp on the mayonnaise!
I get OMG. I understand WTF. I made up LOL…but I must admit, there are times when even I am flummoxed by today’s slang.
In these times of crisis, I thank god for Urban Dictionary. Whether you simply need to translate your niece’s text messages or are trolling Craig’s List for a C/D, DDF, BBW (and who hasn’t been there?), urbandictionary.com is the place to learn all the latest slang (see, for example, FLIRJ).
One such piece of slang will be of particular interest to our readers. According to Urban Dictionary, lame salad is a “poorly tossed mix of uneven and very low quality ingredients.” Well, that sounds familiar. There are actually four separate entries for lame salad on UDDC, including:
the lamest thing that can happen
the worst possible combination of lameness and weakness that can ever exist, and
the ancient Caribbean salad that is the worst salad ever
Whatever. Sometimes it is easiest to learn a new word by using it in a sentence. Read and learn. All these sentences come directly from the UDDC lame salad page (with just a little copy-editing).
“This happy meal is lame salad, why is the bun missing and why is there a pack of salt in my coke?”
“Your mechanic did a lame salad job on my brakes, I can’t even steer now and I’m stuck in reverse.”
“You hear about that suicide on myspace? That’s lame salad if I ever heard of such a thing.”
“Reality TV is lame salad.”
“That meeting was some lame salad.”
Person 1: “Look at that kid wearing jorts and a yugioh bookbag!”
Person 2: “I bet he keeps lame salad in that bookbag and snacks on it in class.”
Person 1: “Why the fuck are we having this easter egg hunt at night? I can’t see anything, and I just tripped over some eggs and broke them.”
Person 2: “Lame salad.”
Route 66, the famous American highway that runs 2,448 miles from Chicago to LA, was called the “Mother Road” by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath. Well, in the 1930s, the Mother Road may have been delivering Okies to California like so many unwanted kittens, but today Route 66 is mother to something much more sinister: a truly shitty salad!
Could it be America’s worst salad? Leave it to an élitist, Australian cyclist to find such a shitty salad star in the heart of an American legend. In her own words: “This pale excuse for food really takes the cake…and even a trans fatty Li’l Debbie has more appeal than this.” Check out the video below and visit her blog about biking Rte. 66.
Now, don’t get me wrong—any establishment that offers 2-for-1 happy hour specials on beer, wine, and margaritas can’t be all bad. And the free chips and salsa aren’t bad either…but let’s face it: On the Border is a shitty, boring, fake-ass Mexican restaurant. (I mean, where exactly in Mexico do they serve crispy-fried onion strings as a taco topping?)
Turns out that On the Border’s taco salad also has the distinction of winning the “Worst Salad” award from Men’s Health Magazine. They seem to have a problem with the salad’s 1,450 calories, 102 grams of fat, 78 grams of carbs, and 2,410 mg sodium. Yes, that’s about twice your recommended daily allowance of fat and almost exactly your recommended daily allowance of sodium.
So, if you do find yourself at OTB (maybe you are the victim of an office happy hour or a lunch with your girlfriend’s boss), play it safe: keep the 2-for-1 drinks coming and fill up on chips. Surely you can find a real taco place on your drunken stumble home.
The cucumbers and radishes splashed
Vibrant color onto the evolving masterpiece!
The olive oil seemed right from the vineyard
As it assisted this beautiful, healthy creation
Reach a majestic level of culinary
Excellence that only the rich and famous
Should deserve!
The pleasant aftertaste of the cukes and
Onions brought me back the rest of the day
To that wonderful moment of presentation
When this masterpiece first descended
From the waiter’s arm onto my table
Causing my starving eyes to feast upon
Its color, aroma, and odd symmetry…
Today I received a remarkable poem from shittysalad.com member (and accomplished poet) kathylynnss, which served as a reminder that, even in these tough times, not every salad is shitty. Though the focus of this site has always been, and will continue to be shitty salads, I will be posting this gem, one stanza at a time, over the next few weeks to help us all keep this in mind.
Nature’s Veggie Mosaic
The cold, tingling taste of plum tomatoes
Slowly entered my palate as my tongue
Savored every morsel of these crimson
Scrumptious little sweet bundles of joy.
The dark, leafy spinach enveloped the
Seductively wicked shreds of mozzarella cheese
Which only a Monet could capture Faithfully on the canvas.
The scent of the luscious, long, cold scallions
Awoke my sleepy taste buds, making me feel
Alive and joyful…
There’s really only one reason that the Yazidi people of northern Iraq could consider eating lettuce to be taboo: they must have come across the variety of Lactuca sativa known as iceberg lettuce.Somehow, this insipid vegetable remains the most popular lettuce variety in the United States, despite its lack of flavor and nutritional value —–>
I am not alone in deriding this ridiculous, watery excuse for a salad base. Filmmaker and B-more native John Waters calls iceberg lettuce the “the polyester of greens” in his book Crackpot: the Obsessions of John Waters (see also: Polyester).
Like polyester at the height of its popularity, iceberg lettuce is ubiquitous. Even at its freshest (most fresh?), all iceberg delivers is a tepid little crunch and a squirt of slightly bitter water.At its worst, well, at its worst, iceberg lettuce becomes the star of shitty salads ’round the world.
The FDA just approved irradiation to kill microbes on iceberg lettuce (and spinach too).Some people think that having food labeled “irradiated” will cause sales of iceberg to drop, but I don’t think so; fans of iceberg have already proved that they’ll put anything in their mouths.
Where can you see a goatskin covered ball whizz past your head at nearly 200 miles per hour AND get a shitty salad? The answer is simple: Ocala Poker and Jai-Alai in beautiful Ocala, FL. The salad pictured here has all the classic hallmarks of a shitty salad: the wilty iceberg lettuce, the giant unripe tomato wedges, the blue cheese salvation. Only thing working against this salad is the addition of cucumbers, which was unexpected.
It is important to note that this salad came from the snack bar, which also serves regular and jumbo hot dogs, all manner of fried crap, and cold Bud and Bud Lite for $1.50. So don’t make the mistake of looking for this shitty salad at the fancy “Carom Clubhouse Restaurant,” which has a $10 minimum and wine!
Even if shitty salads aren’t your thing, a trip to Ocala Jai-Alai is well worth it. The home team’s a hoot (Olabe and Tommy are popular favorites) and you can place bets with all the other obese, oxygen cart-toting fans. Don’t forget: Wednesday is College Night!
