A Diet of Leaves

"Do you want any salad with that?" asked the food slave at my local lunch shop.
Not an unreasonable question you might say although since my bread filling of choice was tuna and vinegar I think it was a little superfluous.  Incidentally I had to fight hard for the vinegar.

Still the salad question forced me to gaze at the glass counter behind which a wide variety of freshly slaughtered vegetables were displayed for my eating pleasure.  Apparently the motto of my sandwich shop is "If it lives in dirt we can slap it on a bun".  I must admit its a far cry from the sad collection of plant material that was offered as sandwich filler when I was starting out in the work force a depressingly large number of years ago.

As I recall the options at the time consisted of; tomato, sun dried tomato, semi-sun dried tomato, partially sun dried tomato, moon dried tomato, undried tomato, and tomato that wasn't quite dried but but definitely wasn't as sloppy and drippy as actual tomato.  Plus lettuce.  And when I say lettuce I mean nice, shredded, flavourless iceberg lettuce not rocket which seems to be the current craze despite the fact that it tastes like something you would find in a lawnmower catcher.

One thing I've noticed gaining more currency over the years is "leaves".  I'll have a tandoori chicken wrap with tomato, hummus, olives and leaves.  Apparently it is no longer considered absolutely necessary to identify the plant species you are slapping on your customers lunch.  This is despite the fact that quite a number of plant species are dangerous to consume.  I'm not saying I would refuse to eat it necessarily but I would at least like to be informed if I'm consuming deadly nightshade as part of my daily meal routine.

The prevalence of leaves (generic) is just the latest in various vegetable fads.  There was a time in the early nineties when the only available vegetable on the planet was bean sprouts.  Bean sprouts were falling out of lifts, turning up on the most unlikely of meals (I mean, ice cream? Seriously?) and blowing down the streets tumbleweed fashion.  Having enjoyed their five minutes of fame bean sprouts vanished as swiftly as they arrived and I'm pretty sure future generations will never believe they existed at all.

I think (I could be a couple of foodstuffs behind) that chia seeds are quite the thing nowadays.  This is in keeping with the trend started with quinoa of sourcing our food from places not noted for their ability to feed themselves.  I guess one feels just a little bit better about eating food if you know that the people who grew it are probably starving to death.

Anyway once you have your chia seed salad (chia seeds, rocket, leaves and small chunks of bread baked until it breaks your teeth) you can garnish it with pink Himalayan rock salt.  Pink Himalayan rock salt is way better than salt because it's pink and, apparently, Himalayan.  I must admit I favour the green Hindu Kush rock salt myself but then I'm just a food snob.

There was a time, of course, when salt was a rare and desired commodity.  Fortunes were made from it, economies (Venice, I'm looking at you) were built on it, salaries were paid in it (hence the term "salary"), I've even heard that certain ostentatious social climbers put the stuff on their food.  But let's face it that was a long time ago.  Nowadays salt is as common as, well, salt.  A quick dye job and an exotic point of origin don't alter the fact that it's basically NaCl, one of the simplest and  most boring chemical compounds on the face of the earth.

So what's next for the dirt grubbers trying to make money out of morons?  Well dirt of course.  Already one pays more for vegetables produced from one region over another.  How long before highly specialised types of dirt (no doubt only found a long way away in an appropriately non-western/self sustaining country) are determined to be the only types of dirt that one should really grow our food crops in?  When that happens the only vegetable you'll be able to buy is "leaves" and the glass topped counter will be full of soil samples that we'll make our selection from.